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a firewarriors guide to the galaxy
Topic Started: 27th October 2007 - 11:54 PM (775 Views)
warlord nazrag
Member Avatar
bomseslask
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Chapter 1: Mur'Phys law

*Imperial space, near the eastern fringe*

"The Tau have a great destiny, to rule in the name of the greater good."

The large spaceship floated in space, the front area carried several weapons, its broadside had a few banks of guns with unusually big barrels that just radiated lethality, but overall it seemed under armed for its size. Most of its impressive tonnage was apparently used for something else.

"That is what they teach us in training at least. That we're supposedly the greatest things the galaxy has seen since the big bang. I never was that interested in that, I was there to fire the gun"

The ship was not alone. The other vessel was smaller, but still big, while the other ship carried enough guns that it might be a warship, this ship clearly wasn't. It was a freighter, currently docked to the Tau Merchant vessel.

"I'm a soldier, I was born to be it, and I consider myself fairly good at it, when it comes to the idea that we're the greatest species in the galaxy..."

The Ceramic armour was big, making the supermen wearing it seem even more imposing than they already were as they advanced towards the chokepoint held by the poor firewarriors. Their bolters held at ready

"... Is just so much bullshit to use the Gue'La expression."

"For the emperor!!!" The space marine yelled as they charged. The Tau rifles were immensely powerful, but against the power armour they were faced it they might as well have been using spitballs.

The Tau never quite had enough firewarriors on board to match a ship of similar size in a boarding action, but against marines even ten times as many firewarriors would have been futile.

By the greater good, we are all going to die. Passed through the head of the young Shas'La directly behind the impromptu barrier as yet another bolter shell blew through the barrier next to him. There were three Tau left, there had been ten when the marines advance began less than thirty seconds before.

One of them got up enough to fire a few shots and pump out a grenade from his carabine before a shell blew his head apart and covered his two remaining fellows with more of the purple blood and offal.

The assignment should have been easy. Just go in, make some trading with a few locals who either were sympathizers or were greedy enough not to care that it was Xenos they were dealing with. Unfortunately somehow a marine chapter with a fondness for sneaky tricks had caught on to their pattern and 'convinced' a local in system freighter to act as bait.

The two Tau remaining behind the barrier both had their stories. The left one was Gir'ar a Firewarrior who was unusually talented and brave, he was a true believer in the greater good and had a charisma that few Tau could match. It was practically a given that he'd make Shas'Ui during the next trial of fire and likely head straight up to Shas'O at full throttle. That had been assuming he would survive this of course.

The other was Mur'Phon. He was from the same class. He had never liked Gir'ar. Okay he had utterly loathed Gir'ar. He was the kind who'd just like to find some obscure posting and stay there for the rest of his life in perfect safety. He also had a reputation for causing accidents. In the end he tended to get blamed for every odd thing that happened. Somehow war-game were he participated on either side never quite went the way they should.

Last war-game had been a total disaster when the Gun drones on both sides had somehow decided to declare independence and ganged up on the Tau doing the fighting, thankfully their weapons had been replaced with stunners instead of their standard carabines, but even so it had been nasty as the training dome weather system had also malfunctioned completely independently so thoroughly that there had been full storm. The participants literally hadn't been able to find the exit due to the storm. The Earth Caste technicians had come to the conclusion that it was just random bits of codes floating around that had coincidentally gone wrong exactly then simultaneously. Secretly every firewarrior that had participated blamed Mur'Phons presence despite him suffering as much as the rest.

Now Gir'ar even if he'd never have time to say it out loud blamed Mur'Phon for the Space Marines being exactly on the ship that their ship was trading with. Mur'Phon on his side knew this and would have replied that he had no more bad luck than anyone, and even if he did cause bad luck it went for all sides and hence would have hit the marines too if it existed as he tossed the grenade over the barrier.

The point he raised in the argument that didn't happen would then be torpedoed by what happened next.

As a finely tuned as a group of elite superhuman killing machines could be the plasma gunner went forward to take out the pesky little barrier with one blast from his heavy weapon. The grenade that sailed in was rightfully deemed to end up too far from them to be a bother without a word exchanged. The gravity plating in this particular area had taken a pounding from the firefight hence it wasn't entirely reliable, both firewarrior suits and Power Armor included aids that made their acting up neglible which was why even the superhumanly intelligent marines had missed it. The small surge dragged the grenade the last few meters straight at the marines in an instant. Straight at the plasma equipped marine. Then it went off.

The grenade wasn't powerful enough to actually harm the marine through his power armor. The plasma gun was another matter. The gun detonated. The emergency heat vent system could have saved him had he not pulled the trigger that very instant, it didn't give it time to try as the entire charge was detonated in the weapon. Frying him instantly and expanding a ball of plasma that covered the corridor from wall to wall. The blast wasn't that intense and excepting the marine on ground zero it was just a minor annoyance that blinded them for a second.

If they had actually bothered to have the argument Mur'Phon would now have been speechless, but recovered to say that it could have happened to anybody. Gir'Ar would have said something akin to "Yeah sure" in a sarcastic tone.

As they weren't having this argument Mur'Phons survival instinct and training took over in coalition. The position was untenable and the enemy wouldn't be stopped short of it, falling back was the only option and this was the best chance yet so he bolted from behind cover towards an indenture that housed the entrance to a vertical maintenance shaft to the side a few meters behind the metal slab that now looked suspiciously like Swiss cheese with more holes than cheese acting as cover. After a moment hesitation Gir'Ar followed.

The plasma cloud choose that untimely moment to dissipate. Mur'Phon dived into cover just before and wasn't seen. Gir?Ar wasn't that lucky.

"Death to the filthy Xeno!" One of the marines yelled. Gir'Ars brain shorted out and he turned towards the Marine with the last seconds of his life with a deer in headlights expression hidden behind his helmet as the bolter snarled.

The first shells didn't actually penetrate his armour, they blew him clean off his feet and sent him barrelling through the air, the follow up shells hit the now weakened armour and shattered it in mid air and penetrated. Interestingly enough there wasn't much mess, the armour mostly contained it and only a small red fountain from the hole just as the shell detonated was visible. The top rating cadet in last years graduation class of firewarriors got wiped from the universe by a hail of bolter shells.

Mur'Phon banged the stuck grill of the upper end of the maintenance shaft with his fist. It was stuck! Didn't anything on this ship work?

The noise was clearly audible for the marines and they turned towards it. In desperation Mur'Phon was about to strike it again, when it fell down straight on him with a resounding clank. He fell hard on the grill covering the way down, head swimming. That was when the grill under him chose to give way and he landed hard a deck down. He was really dizzy now, but barely conscious still. That was when his weapon lying on the side of the shaft decided it was a good time to tip over and fell down, straight onto the poor firewarrior. Even through the helmet the shock was jarring. He blacked out.
________________________________________________________________

Slowly things came back into focus. He blinked. The helmet view was dark, but it powered up as it sensed its user was awake again. The world came into focus.

He slowly managed to move the debris pinning him. In the distance he heard gunfire. He stood up a bit unsteady. Trying to remember what had happened. Then it all came back to him.

Oh shit. This is pretty much the textbook example of not good.

He was behind the enemy line of advance in a boarding action without any way of getting back to his own except punching through the front line, and he sure as hell weren't getting past the marines.

The tactical manual did have a plan for this kind of situation though. It called for the lone soldier to 'Disrupt and distract the enemy to the best of his abilities for the greater good.' Sure he'd distract them if he came in behind them. For the three seconds it took them to turn around and shoot him. He could take an escape pod, and become target practice because a lone escape pod was easy prey even for the minimally armed freighter they were docked too.

Then again the Freighter did trade with several places here, it was unlikely, but possible that he could make his way back to the Tau Empire by stowing away on the right freighters. That provided that the Marines hadn't left a sentry at the entry point. He climbed up. And saw that while there was a sentry it wasn't a marine, but what appeared to be one of the freighters very few men-at-arms standing guard by himself.

That could be a problem if he reported in. He considered shooting him, but that would be too loud. Then he saw the helmet near him. Its monoeye seemingly looking straight at him...

There was a loud clang as the helmet and the guards head met in a short, but quite intense meeting, the Tau head that had been inside unnoticed spilled out and spread purple blood even more over the corridor as the guard collapsed the head landing on top of him in a rather compromising position, the helmet bouncing back.

Mur'Phon moved. He went over to his previous position grabbing a few magazines and grenades, then he considered that he would be out of contact with other Tau for quite some time if this worked and grabbed a few more, after a moment he grabbed another few. Then he ran into the freighter, found a ventilation shaft and went in, closing the vent behind him. Now to find a spot he could spend the next few days, possibly weeks, until he could get to another ship.

It might be cowardly, but he consoled himself that someone had to carry the bad news home.

________________________________________________________________

In space the small vessel waited. The primary target had looked too tough to assault directly, but the imperial freighter that it was docked to was another matter. They were just waiting for the Space Marines to leave it and they would attack, swiftly and brutally. So they waited.
________________________________________________________________

He waited. He was hungry and he wanted to eke out his combat rations. So he was raiding the ships food stores, or rather: Anyplace on the ship he happened to find food as he wasn't exactly sure where the food stores actually were. In this case he was waiting for the small group to leave so he could grab it. It had been five hours since he snuck aboard. The marines seemed to have all but left.

He took out the dataslate from his bag pack again.

The Firewarriors unofficial guide to the galaxy. Written by Shas'O Kais just before his death. The best book ever written in the mind of Mur'Phon.

Kais was known as the first soldier to face the power known as chaos. And later as a very renowned commander, he had been praised up into the sky and the focus of innumerable propaganda. He had however not liked it, and just before his death he'd managed to write and distribute the true story as he saw it as well as his version of what he felt an average grunt needed to know.

The Ethereals had been spending decades decrying them as they showed sentiments that went quite against the Greater Good. It showed Kais succeeding through luck or others doing the main work and him spending most of the time of his early career trying to keep away from the sharp end of the stick. The guide was also decried as it gave a lot of advice on items like avoiding impending death and punishment for avoiding the bad stuff. They had become immensely popular among cadets and low level firewarriors though. The true story had driven down a lot of respect from the other castes, but the fire caste now venerated him up into the skies. In general he'd been relegated from the history books as one of the greatest Tau ever lived to half forgotten by everyone but the fire caste as the Ethereals tried to cover up the embarrassment following him getting his version of things out.

The Guide was a special case though. While officially illegal most commanders 'forgot' they had seen it if they found it during inspections. While it did indeed have sentiments that the etherals didn't like all it's intelligence on enemies was essentially correct and it made a good quick reference guide in the field if the troopers found themselves without support, far better and more to the point than the official material that usually bogged down into technical details irrelevant to fighting and killing them.

Now what does it say about behind enemy lines actions?

He scrolled to the appropriate entry.

"Behind enemy lines: There are general two main ways to unintentionally end up here, the first is to heroically charge through the enemy lines, but the rest of the army isn't good enough to keep up. The second is to hide like a coward until the enemy has passed. In general it's wise to always say the former on your AAR regardless of the actual events. To deal with what you should do here would require a book of its own so sorry, but you are on your own, just remember three things and you should have a decent chance.

1: You are not Super-Tau. If you try to fight them head on you will die. Avoid fighting if at all possible

2: Ethics and Ideals are a thing of convenience. This situation is not convenient. Do whatever you have to do.

3: Primary objective is to return to friendly forces, don't forget that.

Good Luck soldier."

Not as helpful as he'd hoped, but better than nothing.

He prepared to wait until the last two people left the room. That was when the conversation started getting interesting.
________________________________________________________________

"That's the last one." The first one said.

"Are you sure we aren?t being monitored?" His comrade replied. This wasn't something they wanted to be caught in.

"Completely."

"The Tau being taken out of action set back our timetable quite a bit. We were counting on their trade goods to equip us." The first one was obviously the nervous one

"It's no big deal. We have to move a bit more careful, but the alternate source is really even better. And we have still the other xenos in the sector to temporarily divert the blame to. The followers of the true gods always prevail in the end."

"Yes but..."

*clang*

"What was that?!"
________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon leaned forward. What was that about true gods? The imperials only followed one god didn't they? As he leant forward he failed to notice that one of the clips he had acquired slid slowly out of its harness. It fell hard against the metal surface with a clang.

"What was that?"

"I don't know. It came from the vent."

Wordlessly they started reaching for weapons.

Mur'Phon said some obscenities under his breath and brought his weapon up.

The grill in front of the vent completely disintegrated under the blue flash as he vaporized the chest of the closest one.

The red tinged vapour flash burned the poor man next to it and he screamed. Mur'Phons armour was rated to protect against it and the suit computer automatically compensated for the red tinged fog that filled the room. He triggered another blast at the second cultists cutting his scream short. Unfortunately the blasts did damage to more than just the poor bastards being shot. The room had been picked for meetings because it was an unintentional nerve centre of circuits driving various systems of the ship. And wrecked a normally inconsequential one.
________________________________________________________________

The Captain of the freighter lent back. Sometimes life was good. He enjoyed the sip of the expensive wine he had managed to take a small portion off an earlier shipment. The comforting music came out of the antique and irreplaceable device he had been given as a gift from a wealthy friend. It was truly unique.

Or rather it had been as in just that moment it shot sparks all over the room and the music rose to a screech before it went silent completely wrecked by a freak surge as result of a normally inconsequential circuit got blown up.

He shot up as the lights of his cabin flickered. What the hell was happening to his ship!?
________________________________________________________________

*Bridge* A few minutes later*

"It's confirmed captain. We have an intruder. The surge in your cabin was caused by battle damage as it got into a firefight. It appears one of the Xenos managed to sneak over to the ship. I guess Security officer Cian spoke the truth when he said he was knocked out." There were some giggles. The story about how he'd been found out cold with a head in his lap was around the ship by now.

"Well I want that thing shot and killed! Nobody wrecks the ship of Ernst Gurto Firandres!" The captain yelled.

It was officially declared Tau Season.

Chapter 2: When it rains it pours.

The Firewarriors Unofficial Guide to the Galaxy says this about Imperial Navy Men at Arms and crewmen pushed into service as fighters:

"C'mon! Can it get any easier? These guys are for all intents and purposes just plain cannonfodder. They rarely, if ever, carry weaponry that can crack a firewarrior's armour in cover reliably, or unless it's in numbers even out in the open. The basic crewmen can rarely shoot that well anyway. And Men at Arms aren't that much better. For all intents and purposed they might as well not be armoured when it comes to our weapons.

You should however avoid getting arrogant. What they lack in lethality they make up for with sheer numbers. Our Doctrine means we never have enough fighters on hand to match them one to one, one to two or hell rarely one to four. Somehow our great and enlightened leaders think that boarding is such a minor aspect it's not worth stationing enough warriors on board to get even firepower. Which means that overall you should play it careful, if you meet them in numbers find cover and pick them off one by one or if possible use movement to engage them in detail. Make sure to bring enough ammo.

Also note that the dedicated men at arms of larger ships tend to be better trained, though still quite inferior, and will from time to time have acquired proper weaponry. This happens rarely, but keep your eyes open, it's really embarrassing to be killed by these amateurs.
________________________________________________________________

The shotgun armed crewman raced through the corridor in their hunt for the stowaway. Their captain had given the order, and given the captains egomaniacal tendencies nobody wanted to disobey.

The current plan was to station armed personnel at probable exit spots while men at arms flushed the Tau out. The first attempt didn't go so well.
________________________________________________________________

The Men at Arms Lieutenant was the only near-military officer they had, but he had a habit of being hands on. Hence he had been the one who decided to take the job of doing the flushing. The improvised flamer in his hands likely wouldn't cut it against the Tau's armour, but it would sure as hell hurt and likely be able to drive him out of the system into the waiting arms of his troops.

"Can you see him?" The cramped conditions meant that he hadn't been able to bring an aupex as well and hence relied on a crewman outside the system to feed him information.

"I think so. He is in front of you moving slowly towards you."

"Does he look close enough for the flamer to have effect?"

"Hard to see. All the metal in the way is interfering, but yeah I'd say so."

He triggered the flamer sending a jet of fire down the shaft. That should make their stow away realize he was unwanted.

"Lieutenant he's moving towards you much faster! He seems to be attacking!"

"I can handle that." He fired several times. The crewman got more and more agitated as the Tau seemed to get closer and closer.

"He's right on top of you now!"

"I can't see him!" He was getting scared now. Did he have some sort of invisibility?

"That can't be right. Wait a sec... I was holding it upside down."

"Oh frak." He turned his head slowly.

"Boo." Said Mur'Phon and fired.
________________________________________________________________

The shot was audible even without the com to the sergeant outside the vent. He had told that young fool that he should let the grunts take his chances. He gestured for one of the privates to go in. They hadn't sent more men in due to fear of friendly fire, no problem of that now.

The private started entering the shaft, and then screamed a terrible death scream as the flamer torched him alive.

Okay, so now the little bastard had a flamethrower. They were going to have to try something else.
________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon dropped the flamer. That had to have shaken them a bit, but if they decided to send more in he couldn't count on them looking the wrong way all the time. Some more 'rear line disruption' was in order. He had noted a few interesting locations prior to being discovered. One of them seemed very likely to be a juicy target for a quick raid.
________________________________________________________________

The room was noisy. The technicians and techpriests were managing power expertly and calmly. Nobody even heard the clang as the grenades bounced on the deck.

The explosions wrecked quite a few more systems.
________________________________________________________________

The lights shipwide started flickering as the grenades wrecked a power room.. The Captain was infuriated. This alien was running circles around his security personnel and blasting holes in *his* ship! This was just unacceptable.

"Gas him out!" The Captain said.

"Sir he's in the ventilation. If we use gas it'll be all over the ship!"

"Then use Non-Lethal gas! I don?t care, get him out of those vents now!"
________________________________________________________________

The man at arms who tossed the grenade into the shaft considered. After hitting that power room he should be in this area. He put on his own mask as it rolled downwards into the shaft. With luck he'd be forced further down into the hands of the teams ready to gun him as he fled out of it.
________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon picked up the grenade which spread the green foul smelling smoke. This was just insulting. Did they seriously think that he didn't have airtight armour? That was pretty much a must on the modern battlefield. Only civilians and light militia didn't bother in this galaxy. And even most of those had gas masks on hand. The gas rose upwards. Might as well...

He tossed it downwards.
________________________________________________________________

The men at arms were nervous. They had been told the Xeno would likely head that way. So when the gas grenade suddenly rolled out they were surprised for a second. Before the fast acting puke gas took effect.

The gas spread around the ship through the ventilation rapidly becoming tinned out. Dozens of crewmen were hit though. The Tau slipped through the net set for him again and moved to a different section.

During the chaos one of the groups opened fire in panic, hitting another group. The other group had heard all kinds of stories and though it was the xeno with captured weapons. They returned fire.

Before you knew it the entire port side of the ship was engaged in raging fire-fights. Of course the Tau was now heading straight over to the starboard side. It wasn't sure if the sensors had already been taken out or if they were taken out in the general chaos now.
________________________________________________________________

The small escort vessel was on it's own. This freighter was reading damage, they apparantly had an accident and it seemed the perfect time to strike. The Dark Eldar escort moved in. It was time to grab some fresh slaves.
________________________________________________________________

There was yet another in the long line of clangs these days as the grill hit the deck after Mur'Phon kicked it open and dropped to the deck.

This cargo hold was one of the lowest parts of the ship. It had not been caught in the general chaos yet. Perhaps he was lucky and they were carrying food here? He was still hungry after all.

He moved forward cautiously. The current plan was to get some food, screw up the ship some more then flee in an escape pod. It wasn't a good plan, it was just the best he had right now.

That was when the ship shook. Like if something was docking with it. He immediately let his imagination run off with visions of space marine battleships pouring marines into the ship to eliminate him with a casual effort. He forced himself calm. If that was so fretting about it wouldn't help one bit. Stress ruined more than delay and laziness. Besides, maybe he had gotten lucky and it was a Tau vessel there to rescue him? Unlikely, but possible after all.

He heard a noise and leaned around the corner of the crate he was behind. There was somebody working there, someone who hadn't been bothered by his not so silent entrance. He didn't seem armed. He seemed to be alone too.

He needed information. He had noted a handful of locations in the hours before he was discovered, like the power room he had wrecked, but he had no idea where the escape pods were. This guy could provide that.

Prior to this deployment he had been given a course in gothic so he could speak the language a bit, he hoped he could speak it well enough to be understood. It'd be too embarrassing to fail an interrogation because he couldn't manage to ask the questions.

He raised his weapon.

"You there, get up, slowly."

The white robed person stood up.

"Turn around." The man turned. His left eye didn't look human; it looked almost as if it had a black mechanical patch over it. Combined with his white robe Mur'Phon made the connection that he was a tech priest. That much made sense. What followed didn't.

"Can I look at it?"

"What?"

"Your weapon, can I study it?"

Mur'Phon was taken aback this was not a reaction he had even remotely expected.

"I'm holding you at gunpoint. I can gun you down at any moment and you want to study my gun?"

"Well yes. Your kind is rarely unnecessarily brutal so since you haven't shot me already I doubt you are going to shoot me unless I do something stupid."

It seemed logical, yet it seemed utterly insane at the same time. Which pretty much fit the guide's description of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He briefly considered just shooting the guy and finding someone else.

"Tell me where the escape pods are."

"Will you let me study your weapon then?"

"No. And if you ask one more time I'm going to blow off one of your legs. I'll do the same if you don't tell me where the escape pods are."

"What if I do both? Do you blow off both my legs?" The tech priest asked.

"No, both legs, one arm, I shoot of limbs based on annoyance."

"Fair enough, the escape pods are in that direction." He gestured with his left arm.

"That doesn't say me much you know."

"It's still technically telling you where they are."

"You do realize annoying the person that has a weapon trained on you is a bad idea, right?" Mur'Phon was getting frustrated. Talking to this guy was like talking to a brick wall.
________________________________________________________________

have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
The eldar were pouring into the ship. They could almost taste the blood and fear of the helpless and shocked freighter crew.

They were shocked themselves for a second when they entered the fray.

The point squads stopped cold when they saw the fire-fight. There was no pattern they could discern. It just looked like they shot anything that had a muzzle flash. The air was filled with smoke. There was an odd smell in the air from the puke gas, and a few of the invaders without helmets who for whatever reason was somewhat less resistant than the rest felt the effect of the thinned out gas and puked their own guts up. Quite frankly they came to bring chaos and destruction, and found that the damn Mon-Keighs had taken the fun away from them by doing it themselves.

It only lasted a few seconds though before the pressure of the rest of the raiders behind them pushed them into the fray. They spilled into the ship by the dozens to kill, maim and enslave any sentient they could get their hands on.
________________________________________________________________

The bridge was silent. It didn't stay silent.

"I want these intruders off my ship!" The captain boomed.

"Sir! Our people aren't responding, there are massive failures in the system. Sensors are down, communications are down. We can't call for help and our crew is out of control. We got to abandon ship. We can't stop this assault!" The lieutenant next to him stated. He had wished to join the navy, but failed to meet the standards, so he had gone into the merchant marine as well, but he could not make this egomaniac see that these actions were getting the crew slaughtered. They had to get out of there while they could.

"This is *my* ship. We are not abandoning it for anything less than a direct order from the emperor himself!"

The bridge crew was scared, but that fear was rapidly being overridden by an even stronger fear. Mutiny was a very real possibility. They never got the chance.

The pressure door burst open. A lone eldar wych charged.

The men at arms protecting the captain tried to get their weapons in line, but she was too fast and already in close contact.

The first man raised the weapon just as the nasty looking double bladed knife cut through his arm, bone and flesh alike, like it was made of butter. Even before he managed to scream she was making her next attack, she took a horizontal cut through his gut. A maximum pain and slow death cut.

Her face was covered with an evil grin as she dodged out of the way of the autogun salvo from the next soldier. She was like lightening. As far as she was concerned everyone else was moving in slow motion and she was the only one moving normally. She was used to this and she took full advantage of it to cause as much suffering in as short time as possible. She was now death incarnate, and she loved every minute of it. The Captain was a scared man so a kick to his head took him out for torture later on. The Lieutenant next to him was scared too, but he had a core of courage as he reached for his pistol with cold determination that she felt would be too much of a bother to break, so she merely decapitated him with a quick slash. It was a shame to waste someone like that, he might have been an entertaining addition to the arena fighting back home. Oh well life was imperfect.

To everyone else she was a whirlwind of blades, one moment there, one moment here, one moment she was ripping your guts out, the next she was beheading someone who seemed to be across the room. They just couldn't keep up. They all died, though some slower and with more suffering than others.

Alone she stood victorious. Alone she savoured the taste of blood from her blades. She charged back into the general melee satisfied with having shattered the last remains of the command structure on the ship.
________________________________________________________________

The guide has this to say on the Dark Eldar:

Simple study has led to the conclusion that there are infact two kinds of Eldar. The first is the most well known. The manipulative bastards with worldships. The second are shadowy raiders.

They are much like their brethren, only spikier and with less clothes.

These people are psychopaths. They are only focused on making you suffer. Either by making sure your death is painful or by taking you prisoner and dragging you home for torture. Frankly I suspect they are overcompensating for something.

As they nearly always achieve surprise you can expect little in the way of support. However if you can keep the range open you will never need it. Armour appears to be a lost art for these people. Even your standard rifle will gut their heaviest vehicles. And their infantry has very little chance against you, while master shots their standard infantry weapons usually aren't that big a threat as they are meant to be more painful than lethal hence lacks the punch to deal with our heavier armour. Their support weapons can kill you, and have the reach to match, but they are thankfully rather few. Overall most of their firepower lacks the reach of even our standard infantry. I find it hard to believe that a species that supposedly has been starfaring for millions of years can be this badly equipped compared to us, but it hangs together with their need to cause suffering.

However, while they die very fast at range, at short distances they are sudden death, lightening fast and with numerous very lethal close combat weapons they can there slaughter our forces with near impunity. Let's face it. Our hand to hand training is substandard and it shows.

Their greatest weakness however is their need to brutalize you. It sounds odd but it makes them make mistakes no trained professional will do, and it can with a little luck be made use of. If given the choice between two ways that both seem about equal efficiency where one causes needless suffering to their target they will invariably take that one, even if they lose a lot of efficiency in doing so. Basically a variant of our Kauyon (The Patient hunter) can easily be converted to use against these people. Provided they give you time to execute it. Never a sure bet.

It's further complicated by their quick teleport strikes. They usually either use elite troops, or masses of cannon fodder. Which makes keeping the distance hard. This is where those silly long distance runs you do in training tend to come in handy. You'll be surprised at how fast you can run in these situations.

Also note there are exceptions to their weakness see: Unit list: Incubi

*The article continues with list of specific units.*
________________________________________________________________

"So can you show me the way to the escape pods then?" Mur'Phon said. This guy was just impossible, but he suspected he wasn't actually drawing out the time for reinforcements to appear; rather he was just cranky he had a gun trained on him.

"Well certainly, why didn't you just say so?"

Mur'Phon wanted to go smash his head against a wall or something. It had taken over thirty minutes to get this far.

Just then the door burst open. Mur'Phon spun around reflexively and launched a grenade from the under slung launcher. It hadn't even impacted when he registered that these weren't human.

"Eldar?" He said simply as the grenade burst among them. The blast took care of the first few, he switched from semi to full auto and let rip with the powerful pulse weapon.

Nobody in the squad survived through the doorway. And they were too intent on getting into the fight to think about hanging back and using cover.

"That's it. This day officially sucks!" He exclaimed.

"Uh? I think it might be an idea to make use of the escape pods now."

"Yah think?!" Mur'Phon was starting to believe that he indeed attracted bad luck. He gestured for the tech priest to move. Never hurt to have a meat shield in front of him.
________________________________________________________________

The wych's face was still covered by that insane and evil grin that would make people with weak nerves wet themselves. The current target looked tough, a man at arms with several scars on his face, looking every bit the worn veteran. Her experience told him that he had been in several fights and if he was scared that was forced into a tiny room in the back of his skull never to be seen by his grunts, a classic sergeant type. He might actually be a challenge, even if he was a slow Mon-Keigh. She charged. Despite that she couldn't shake the feeling that he was acting like he knew something she didn't.

There was something about his right fist? He was holding something in it. They were big hands, might hide a lot, but what did he hide? It would match the size of a... Grenade!!!

The realization made her reflexively try to break of the charge and get some distance. He knew he was dead, but he'd take her with him so she couldn't kill his men. She stopped and tossed herself away from him. It was a simple HE grenade. He didn't want to risk hurting his people with shrapnel, so she managed to avoid the main blast, but the walls and ceiling were already heavily damaged. Debris flew through the air, a fairly large chunk fell lose from the ceiling and hit her head. She blacked out.
________________________________________________________________

In space reality rippled. The barrier between the immatterium was breached.

By sheer fluke (Or Mur'Phons presence, take your pick) they materialized very close to the freighter. One of the larger vessels detected the two vessels locked in deadly boarding combat. The hive mind decided that it would be better to board the vessel and set course for it. The great devourer had arrived and the ship was decided it would be a nice appetizer.
________________________________________________________________

The Eldar had gone into frenzy, all rational thought lost. The tech priest had acquired a laspistol and turned out to be a decent shot for a civilian. Even so alone against the Eldar he would have died. The heavily armed soldier tough turned out to be a little too much for the somewhat nuts eldar to handle in their frenzied state.

"So? What?s it like being an alien?"

"Hey as far as I?m concerned you are the alien." Mur'Phon replied.

"Hm? Well from your point of view it would be like that. I actually never considered that angle."

This guy was just nuts.

That was when the hull seemed to start to just... Melt.

"What the?" Even before it finished claws started to chew through the hull. The Tyranids had arrived.

"By the omnissiah... I think we need to run."

"Like hell." Mur'Phon agreed.
________________________________________________________________

The wych blinked, trying to clear her head. Her expression had changed it was no longer the insane expression of evilness. It was more like a small scared animal. She had no idea on the current chaos and reached out. She grabbed something soft and picked it up. Then she recoiled off the deck and dropped the severed head. She didn't quite shriek, but it was close. She grabbed her weapons, and stood up and shivered a little. It was chilly. The flickering lights implied that staying here on this ship wasn't a good idea. She started walking, then broke into a run.
________________________________________________________________

The human and tau were running like hell. Occasionally they'd turn and fire some shots to slow the swarm behind them. It was like a solid wall of organic material. And it was trying it's best to crush them.

"Why do things like this always seem to home in on me!?" Mur'Phon managed to get out despite the run.

"Why didn't you tell me in advance that you attract trouble!?" the tech priest replied.

Despite the situation Mur'Phon couldn't resist. "You didn't ask."

They were approaching the escape pod area fast, most the pods were already gone. A few remained. They homed in on one of them.

They leapt the last meter into it. The tech priest slammed the button to fire it off before they were even fully inside dropping the pistol to do this and not hit the floor too hard. The door slid shut. And the pod started moving The tyranids advanced on the pod, but another bunch of crewmen trying to get out distracted them long enough for it to make it to the tube and it fired off.

As soon as it moved away from the ship the relief and stress in Mur'Phons system had a effect. He dropped his weapon.

"Hahahaha! Man I'm good!"

The tech priest in the meantime looked into the pod.

"Um? Alien."

"I'm so great. I'm more badass than Kais!"

"Yo Tau."

"When I get home they'll have to write a whole library about this!"

"We're not alone."

That got through. Mur'Phon shut up and finally noticed. They were sharing the pod, with a female eldar wych.

They both knew how fast they were, and they had both dropped their weapons.

"Oh shit." He said simply

Chapter 3: Escape pod blues.

The Guide has the following to say about Dark Eldar wyches:

"From what I have been able to gather these lightly clad hand to hand experts usually start out in arena gladiatorial battles to the death. Which means they have virtually always fought and killed repeatedly before.

Personally I suspect the best environment to face these guys in is an ice waste. They walk around practically naked, why they aren't freezing their butts off normally is beyond me. Whereas we walk in thermal regulated armor that makes sure we always are at the temperature that is the most comfortable at all times. We do have some cool items all right.

Anyway. These guys are good shots and terrifying warriors at close range. They got two weaknesses though. One is their obsession with fighting flashy, it means they will take chances no professional would make. And it is not that unlikely to give you or your mates a clear shot at giving them a pulse treatment. There is also their excess brutality. They'll take their time to kill your mates. That gives you a chance to set up a perfect firing position for when they finish and can blow them away.

If you find yourself at close range unable to take a shot and no chance of running (Well usually no point in trying then, they are faster than you anyway), put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

________________________________________________________________

"Uh... Why hasn?t she killed us yet?? Mur'Phon whispered. They were backs to the walls, guns at their feet.

She was sitting in the other corner. Shivering a little.

"I think she wants to see us afraid before she kills us. The moment we go for our weapons she'll be all over us and not in the good way."

"I think we need to talk her out of it."

"Well... It’s not like we have any better ideas to save us." The very idea of talking a xeno out of not ripping out their entrails and feeding them to their previous owners was unlikely, but it's not like they had any better things to do to pass the time.

The tech priest cleared his throat.

"Young lady. I realize that right now you want nothing more than killing us brutally and painfully and then dance in our blood, but I' d like you to reconsider."

"Why..." She started. Somewhat slowly. Gothic wasn't her first language.

"We can offer a wide variety of services. As well as valuable technology. Not to mention very useful and accurate information thanks to my reference guide." Mur'Phon added.

"Wha..."

"I have been rated as one of the best weapon makers in the sector. While it takes me a few tries usually, when I start getting it right I can make marvelous equipment. A match for the best equipment used by our amazing spacemarines. Surely that must be worth something to such a fine warrior as yourself."

"I..."

"If you will just hold off on killing us I am sure we can come to a satisfactory agreement, mutually beneficial to all parts." He wished he was water caste right now.

If either of them hadn't been scared out of their wits they would likely have noticed the fear which she occasionally glanced at the guns on the deck. She shivered again.

"Cold" she said simply. It was clear she felt that anything more than single words would get her cut off.

The two desperado negotiators looked at each other. Without a word they worked out a plan.

Mur'Phon reached for his backpack's ration compartment, he hoped the taste wouldn't be too bad for her, but food tended to help against cold.

The Tech Priest slipped out what appeared to be a soldier jacket Mur'Phon didn't recognize from under his robe, he'd see if the symbols matched anything in the guide later.

They reached forward slowly. As to not seem like they were trying anything. She took the jacket gratefully and started nibbling on the combat ration. Grimaced a little at the taste, but hunger took over and she managed to get it down.

Only then did she manage to get out the sentence she had been trying to say the entire time.

"Why would I want to kill you?" She said in a voice that practically radiated genuine innocence and kindness.

Their brains committed simultaneous near perfectly synchronized temporary shutdowns at that.

________________________________________________________________

It took them a few minutes before they got able to actually think again.

"So you plan to torture us then. Make us suffer until we beg you to kill us?" Mur'Phon was getting ready for a desperate dive for his weapon despite the low chance of success

She looked down. Undeniably cute yet depressing at the same time. "Am I some kind of monster?"

"Uh what... Of course not!" The techpriest got out.

"Yeah of course not. Infact you are a beautiful young lady." Mur'Phon was pretty sure this was true, that she had the kind of looks that humans though was to die for. He of course was unable to see it if that was so.

"Really?" She sounded more upbeat, but there was something to her voice that said she did know deep down that they were saying it because they though it was what she wanted to hear. She just tried to pretend she didn't realize it to herself. Complex matter

Mur'Phon however was getting a nagging suspicion.

"Wait. You don?t want to kill us?"

"No." She said in that same tone low tone. Not even a trace of annoyance from being asked again.

"Nor torture us?"

"No."

"Nor make us suffer in other ways?" Mur'Phon finished.

"No. You haven?t done me anything so why should I?" She was sounding genuinely confused, and somewhat afraid. As if she didn't want to know the answers.

"What is your name?" He finished.

"I don?t know."

"By the Omnisiah..." The techpriest said. She had amnesia.

The two looked at each other and nodded. Remind her on what she used to be may have the bad effect of reawakening her old persona. Best take it calm and keep it down for now.

"What is going on? The first I remember is waking up surrounded by a lot of... Dead people" she seemed to have trouble getting it out.

Is it even legal to look that cute?

She had the aura of a small scared animal around her that just seemed to add to cuteness factor even as an alien like him saw it.

This made what happened next all the more shocking.

The small cockroach thing was minding its own business. Unfortunately this was a bad day for everyone in system, including it.

The eldar turned. She looked at it. Her eyes widened.

Then faster than they could see she moved. With a snarl she slashed it apart into several very tiny bits!

The two other occupants jumped backwards in shock.

She stopped. Realizing what she did.

"Uh... Sorry. I don?t know what came over me."

Mur'Phon was really glad right now that his armor recycled body waste.

"Uh... No problems with us. We don't like insects either."

"Yeah infact we hate them. The bugs that chased us onto this pod wanted to make us an early appetizer. So really no problem. Just give us a warning next time. I don't think that small bug was planning to eat us."

"We were chased out by bugs? Were they the things that killed everyone?"

"Well? In the end, yes. Though it was a chaotic situation."

"I hate them." She stated. In a calm tone as if she was talking about the weather. It turned somewhat sadder immediately.

"And I don't like feeling hate. It's feels as if that emotion is burning me out from the inside."

The tech priest and the Tau looked at each other again.

This can't be real can it? Was the though that passed through both their minds.

Mur'Phon broke the silence. "Uh? What can you tell me about that planet this pod seems to be headed towards?"

"Well yes. It's Tarvin b. This system is fascinating in that there are two habitable worlds on the opposite sides of the star. Tarvin B is the least hospitable of the two and has been overlooked except as a research lab, the geology is also rather interesting..."

"So basically it's a small research world. And the other world is the primary built up world?" Mur'Phon cut him off.

"Yes that is a good way to sum it up."

"Then why do a large part of the 'Nids seem to be heading there first?"

The tech priest shrugged, however given how disasters had started the moment this Tau had appeared he had his suspicions. Saying them out loud as he had the best armor and armaments might not be the best idea though.

"I have no idea, I would say it?s a good idea to go down, grab some shuttle and run like hell to get away from them."

"Sounds like a plan, however?" He raised his weapon.

"I'm not sure why I should trust you. Back on imperial soil you might want to sell me out."

"Without me you would never have gotten off that ship you know."

"Yeah, so? It was an alliance of convenience, now it can seem that it wouldn't be convenient anymore. The question is merely who backstabs who first. And I frankly hate being backstabbed."

"Excuse me, but I have done nothing against you at all. You are the one who's been running around like a psycho with that gun threatening random servants of the omnissiah who are just minding their own business!" Say what you want. The tech priest wasn't easily scared.

"Stop it!" The wych suddenly exclaimed.

"Nobody is going to backstab anyone! Understood?!" She actually wasn't pissed. She looked more distressed than angry, also looking undeniable cute even then.

Despite this they still weren't quite convinced she was harmless. They nodded numbly.

"If anyone tries to backstab anyone I'll..." She trailed off while she tried to think of a threat she was actually willing to back up. Everything from cutting off their limbs and let them bleed to death, to castration, to finally just giving them a savage beating was considered and rejected. She didn't think she'd get herself to actually do it.

"... Well something really mean! Just need to think of something that fits it."

This of course was understood the completely opposite of what she actually meant.

"I think the lady here just took charge." Mur'Phon said weakly.

"I'd be executed as a heretic for having dealt with Xeno anyway. I might as well go all way." The tech priest replied just as weakly. Images of savage maiming that would make a chaos marine wince passed through his mind.

He reached out his hand.

"Junior Adeptus Mechanicus adept Gordonius Fixalticus at your service."

The Tau accepted it. "Mur'Phon. Shas'La of the Tash'Var sept."

"So... Since we are now allies, could I study your weapon?"

"No."

"I assure you the machine god will reward you if you let me borrow it. And I promise I will return it in one piece."

"Will that one piece work?"

"Well..."
________________________________________________________________

The Escape pod was approaching the planet now. To an observer it almost
seemed to hang in space for a moment considering if it really wanted to do this. Drop thousands of feet straight down to impact on the ground to be thoroughly beat up and likely never become space worthy again? Or could it just hang here until the emperor stepped down from the throne to get himself a beer?

In the end gravity decided that it would have none of that. It had come this far and it could damn well travel the last part of the way. It grabbed hold and dragged it downwards heedless of the scream like sound from friction as it plunged through the air with enough speed to turn an Italian driver pale.

Alongside half a dozen other pods it headed straight down. The people onboard each of them being buffeted around wildly.

They came up on the final approach. Retro rockets straightened the drop path, and then fired full power to get rid of speed. Even so the impact was truly jarring for the occupants.
________________________________________________________________

"Can't you imps make a good escape pod to save your lives? Tau pods wouldn't try to kill you in the landing."

The trio stood outside the escape pod under the hot sun of the desert. It was not a hospitable place

"If you Tau could volunteer a few pods I'll gladly duplicate them."

The wych was shaking her head.

Those two aren't for real. Up there they were about to kill each other and now they chat like they are best buddies?

"So where is this research lab you talked about?" The Tau asked. He seemed to have forgotten to shoot. She shuddered. That anyone could be so casual about killing?.

"In that direction, we should be there a bit after nightfall unless some more bad stuff gets attracted to us."

"Hey! It's not my fault!"

"I believe it is better to be safe, than sorry." The tech priest replied

She had to give a snort at that. Somehow it seemed natural that soldiers bantered like that just to keep their minds of the really bad things like that tyranid fleet. Probably some part of what she hadn't forgotten that told her that. Still, it was odd that the Tech priest seemed to fit the soldier type so well.

She tried again to remember, well anything besides skills. She knew she was some sort of fighter, but she didn't feel like a soldier. Not in the way these two both seemed to be.

That was when the ground under the Tau gave way.
________________________________________________________________

One second it was solid. The next it was collapsing.

Mur'Phon reached out trying to grab something, but there was nothing to grab, and no human or tau could react in time to stop the fall.

Of course, there weren't only Tau on hand.

He felt a hand grab firmly onto his. He heard the sound as a knife dug deeply into the ground to give something solid for her to hold onto.

"You know. You could really stand to lose some weight." The wych commented dryly as she was on her stomach trying to hold him up.

He didn't answer. He was staring into the cave. This system looked rather extensive. He switched the helmet vision over on infrared...

"Oh shit, not again!"

"Wha?" the Wych started, but the firewarrior set a new speed record on climbing up.

"RUN!!!" He yelled as he dragged the wych to her legs in pure reflex and started putting his money where his mouth was.

The tech priest started running, looked back, then started laughing as he ran.

"I knew! I knew it!"

"Shut up." Mur'Phon replied.

Up from the hole surged a group of big and hungry ambulls.

Chapter 4: Time to be elsewhere

"I got to admit. This is rather tasty for a field meal." Gordonius commented.

"You are absolutely sure these things aren't sentient right?" The wych said as she reached for a second helping of the Ambull that was the day's choice for the menu.

They were sitting around in a small set of cliffs that hid them well from being seen from the science facility having thanks to being chased by ambulls made it there far faster than planned. Hence they took the time to have a good meal before they went in. One ambull more aggressive or stupid than the rest had graciously "volunteered" to act as the dinner.

"There has never been any indications that they possess any true cunning or intelligence."

The guide had multiple recipes for preparing meals in the field with minimal resources. Ambull was one of them. For some odd reason a lot of aliens that had opposed the Tau empire in the past were listed as well there. Mur'Phon decided not to bring up that fact just now. He had also intentionally and discretely erased humanburgers from the list while preparing the ambull. No need to piss anyone off more than necessary.

"It's a bit funny though. Poetic justice. It tries to eat us, we try to eat it right back." The wych remarked.

"Well it's only fair. Too bad 'nids aren't edible. We'd have enough food to last us a millennium." Mur'Phon replied casually adjusting the portaheater a bit to keep it hot.

The wych shuddered. "Can we talk about something else than them?"

"Gordonius. You were gonna give us a basic plan for the facility?"

"Well yes. I had to improvise to draw it, but it should be fairly good representation on the standard procedures and layout of such research facilities. Unfortunately I'm not sure what procedures they use just before an invasion."

"Right. So we can assume the layout is correct." The ambull hide had made good enough improvisational paper. The blood used to write on it just seemed a tad tacky though.

"But you can't rely on the guard routes." Gordonius finished.

"So the plan is to sneak in, find a ship, find a pilot, convince pilot to take us to the other planet and improvise from there."

"Yes. It is a temporary solution, but it will give us more time."

"Which brings up a problem. We need to be able to make it clear immediately who we are talking to when we're in there. And we're one name short."

They turned towards the wych.

"Well... Can't you just call me something short and simple?"

"What about Miku?" Came from, surprisingly, Gordonius.

"Why Miku?" Mur'Phon wondered.

"Well. No real reason."

"Miku... I can live with that."

"Okay Miku. You are forward recon. Note guard and sensors placements. If you can neutralize without being spotted do so. I'm your backup. If you run into something you can't handle yell and I'll open fire. Please note that this is a last resort thing. 'Cause if we start shooting they know we are here."

"Neutralize... I don't have to kill them do I?"

Well it would be preferable, but somehow I think saying that out loud isn't a good idea .

"Just use your best judgement." It was really worrying when an eldar raider was less bloodthirsty than you were.

"Can you explain again why we have to sneak in anyway? I mean shooting outright seems a bit... Well a good way to make sure they don't give you a chance later on."

Mur'Phon fought the urge to bury his face in his hands.

How the hell could anyone who used to be that lethal be so naïve?
_________________________________________________________________
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She looked up at the night sky again. No sign of the monsters that were heading to devour the world yet. She shuddered again, though this time it wasn't just fear. Why the hell was she going around in big boots and a bikini? She was starting to suspect that her pre-amnesia self had been more than a little weird. She thanked whatever powers ruled the universe that this wasn't an ice-world. The jacket helped a lot though.

Either I was a real ditz who forgot to get dressed or my sense in clothing was on par Mur'Phons luck. Not to mention all the spikes on what little clothing she had, those made casual things like sitting down or trying to pull her legs up to stop freezing... Interesting to say the least.

Miku... She sub-vocalized it again. It wasn't so bad.

That was odd. Shouldn't there have been some guards out here?

She approached closer. Still no signs of any guards at all. She noted a surveillance camera on the fence. It wasn't moving. Infact it didn't seem to be working at all.

Power is out?

The fence wasn't that tall really, but the barbed wire on top of it made things difficult. Especially since she didn't exactly have any clothing to protect against it! She really wanted to beat her previous self for this.

Ah well you used what you had. She took off her jacket, got it over the top barbed wire, almost effortlessly climbed up and over it and managed to even get the jacket loose before letting go and landing silently on the other side of the fence. The entire movement took less than three seconds.

Honestly when it was this easy to get over their fences why did they even bother having them? Then she remembered the wildlife and figured that they probably extended underground as well to stop those ambull things. She wondered again why the other two in her group despite being soldiers were so physically slow. She wasn't that fast. Was she?

She examined the jacket, no rents whatsoever. Pretty solid stuff that.

There were still no signs of life at all. Now she was getting worried.

That's when she finally got close enough to see the rents in the wall.

Okay. Maybe teaming up with someone who seems to have the worst luck in the universe wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had.

For some reason she was sure the marks she saw were from lasguns despite not being able to remember ever seeing them in action. But there was no sign of who they had been fighting.

She turned around to go get the others.

_________________________________________________________________

The Guide on unknown abandoned facilities with little trace of the previous occupants:

"Well. There is one general advice that works in 90% of all cases. You turn around and get as far away as you can. This doesn't always work, either because you have to go in there due to circumstances, or because the guy in charge is a moron. If you do go in there you have to remember to always make sure you got expendables, weather these are gundrones, auxiliary troops like Kroot or Gue'La, or just plain fellow warriors you don't like, always have them. They will save your life if this is one of the all too many places packed full of unpleasantries. There are also a few things that are bad enough that if they happen you bug out, go AWOL or whatever is necessary to get out. Administrative punishment or even demotion is better than slow lingering death or worse. Unless the consequences of leaving are worse than these get away. These things are:

-Finding stuff written in blood on the walls. (This happens unusually often by the way, no idea why)

-Mysterious disappearances among your fellows.

There are also a few things that may save your life.

-Always travel in groups. Doing that means that if you are hit you are less likely to be the one hit and you have a lot more guns to discourage it.

-Whenever there's a place that is easily trapped or looks like a very good hiding place, break out the expendables and send them through first. Elevators, basements, hidden compartments all qualify.

-Speaking of elevators. If at all possible always take the stairs.

-Mysterious occurrences need to be investigated, but make sure you aren't the one doing the investigations.

-Don't ever tempt fate with statements like 'We're perfectly safe' or 'I can handle anything this place hides'. As well as too many other examples to list.

-Despite what procedure says and what you report in never consider the area secure until you have left it and are safely back home.

Continue into such facilities at your own risk."

___________________________________________________________________

"So basically it's been hit by someone and everyone are dead or gone." Mur'Phon asked

"Yep. And knowing our luck they are still there out of sight." Miku replied

"Great, just great. We have to get inside to get to the shuttlepad, which should be in a square roughly in the middle of the buildings."

"The good news is that we don't have to sneak to get inside." Gordonius tried to see the optimistic viewpoint.

"Yeah, now we'll just wander into a trap or something."

They reached the fence and Miku casually climbed over it again, the same gymnastic way as she got in and out last time.

"Well come on, what are you two waiting for?" She asked. For them in full getup it should be a lot easier.

"Uh... I think we'll get in another way." Mur'Phon said as he took out his short sword and got to work cutting his way in.

"Hey it's not like it's difficult." Miku replied. Mur'Phon suddenly realized she frankly didn't realize they weren't up to her skills.

This is gonna make things confusing.

Actually getting through to the shuttlepad proved rather easy. There weren't anyone between them and it. Not even rodents. The silence was unnerving.

The status of the shuttle itself was also a huge surprise.

It was fuelled and ready to go. Every system showed green. Unfortunately there was still no sign of anybody, and none of them could pilot a shuttle.

"Well... That puts a crimp on things." Mur'Phon commented.

Meanwhile Miku hugged herself and stared outwards.

"They never left did they? They were attempting to run, but whatever is down here got them before they could leave."

"Taking off and using trial and error seems like a better option every second." Gordonius said. He was pretty sure that Miku was all too right

"If we do that we're dead. This isn't exactly a simple airspeeder. The odds against it are beyond extreme."

"If whatever is down here kept the pilots alive we might find and rescue them. If not, then we are so very dead if we stay here." Gordonius argued. Whether he meant the 'nid fleet above them or whatever was down here was debatable. Both of them were now watching the edge of the pad for any movement.

Whatever Mur'Phon was going to reply was drowned out by the sudden roar of a plane engine.

_______________________________________________________________

"No sign of movement at all, but the facility looks undamaged sir." The pilot said.

Sergeant Gomez nodded. Their Valkyrie was doing another pass over the facility before going in to land on the shuttle pad.

They had been sortied in a hurry two days ago when all contact had been lost, hitchhiking on an in system freighter on a supply run to the facility, now matters were even more pressing with the Tyranids coming in. Their mission had changed from recon to also recover whatever could be recovered from the base. The expected situation changed from probably a communication problem to Tyranid vanguard.

This was a job for stormtroopers, for elite veteran troopers, not a rookie infantry squad from a just formed imperial guard regiment shipped to their location.

But it had been too late to get another force there in time to do it.

"There's somebody down on the shuttlepad!" The co-pilot exclaimed.

"Who are they?"

"I don't know, three individuals, one seems most definatly female female, at least one of them is a soldier in what appears to be some sort of carapace armor and is armed. The last guy is robed, probably a techpriest."

"Call for them to stay where they are and drop their weapons." The sergeant grinned. This was going to be an easy run. No oversized bugs were going to stop him.

"They've dropped their weapon. Wait a second... The soldier guy, it's a Tau!"

"Take us down, but keep him covered." The Tau had hit this place? Or was he merely a survivor from the trading vessel they took out yesterday?

The squad hit the ground with only two of the squad managing to trip on exit.

Unnoticed by them Mur'Phon groaned under his breath at being at the mercy of amateurs. That stung his pride.

Gomez looked over the three, the eyes were immediately drawn to the female, she was a beauty. Lightly clad, and weird pistol with a nasty looking blade on it and a weird two bladed knife at her feet. But while she was definatly hot below the neck it was surprisingly the face that held the eyes. There was just this... Cuteness and general friendliness even when held at gunpoint with her hands above her head that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside by only looking. There was something odd about her that he couldn't quite place.

Not odd considering he wasn't familiar with dark eldar and her ears were hidden behind her black hair.

He forced his eyes away from her and looked to the next one.

The tech priest was in his white robes, now rather dirty from the day so far. A laspistol was lying at his feet.

He had frankly expected the priest to be a prisoner, but either the Tau was a lot less cautious than he should be or he had been convinced to co-operate somehow, maybe a promise to get to look on the Tau's equipment?

The Tau was the biggest mystery, there had been rumors that a Tau had managed to sneak onboard the freighter that the space marines had been staging from and made quite a bit of chaos before the Tyranids swept in and ate the ship. If it had managed to escape this far he was more cunning than Gomez could give any alien the credit for. The helmet betrayed nothing. He didn't like that. He somehow had the feeling that the Tau was laughing at him behind the helmet.

That was when the Tau started talking

"I don't suppose I can offer you people any ambull steak?" He said simply.
_______________________________________________________

"We don't know what happened! We just got here looking for a way off this accursed planet!" Mur'Phon repeated for maybe the twentieth time

This sergeant had a skull made of ceramite apparently.

"And why should I believe that xeno scum?"

"We had a dinner stop just before nightfall about three kilometers in that direction. The remains, combined with the escape pod and our tracks to them there should confirm my story down to a few hours accuracy. Is that too hard to grasp?"

Mur'Phon was getting really annoyed.

"And why are you so desperate to get away from this facility if you just got here. Some dark secret you have on this place?"

"There is a large fleet of ravaging planet eating monsters heading straight for this place, they often have vanguard forces in place, and this place is empty with marks of weapon fire. Do the math."

Sergeant Gomez on his side was getting frustrated. It never went like this in the holodramas. The aliens were always half dead from fright of dealing with the heroic agents of mankind and never seemed to put much though into their story. He was too stubborn to be shown up by an alien however.

Mur'Phon wanted his helmet back. The sergeant had demanded he took it off and tossed it into the valkyrie. Granted it was probably the only smart action he did, the multitude of sensors, vision modes, communications gear and other nifty toys in the helmet meant that he had a decisive advantage if he tried to escape. But right here that wasn't his first consideration. He kept expecting genestealers to pop up and start hacking them up any second without his helmet sensors to tell him about them.

"It appears the alien refuse to tell the truth even now. So we will have to investigate ourselves..."

Bad idea.

"We will split up in three groups each with one prisoner to cover more ground and prevent them from plotting together."

Really bad idea.

"As this area seems secure we can save some time and use the elevators to get around."

Is he deliberately trying to do every stupid thing possible?

"After all we can handle anything that can possibly be hiding here."

Mur'Phon's mouth opened and he stared wide eyed and slack jawed at the sergeant.

Okay. That's it. We're dead.

"Prepare to move out team."

Mur'Phon buried his head in his hands. He though it was lieutenants that usually was this stupid in the guard.

"Why me?" He muttered under his breath.

Chapter 5:

Mur'Phon wanted desperately to follow the guide's advice and be elsewhere. Unfortunately the four guys around him with lasguns didn't hold the same opinion. He was unarmed, seriously under-equipped as everything save his basic armor was dumped in the valkyrie waiting on the shuttlepad and he was at the mercy of idiots.

The only good news was that the elevators didn't have local power as he had feared. The sergeant had simply been too stupid to consider that no power probably meant no working elevators.

The bad news was that while the facility itself was two stories tall aboveground. It was a lot deeper than he had suspected. It was a maze of corridors and rooms and small labs. It seemed to have been rather densely populated. Frankly he'd have preferred it if the guardsmen turned off their flashlights. Tau night vision would give him a serious advantage over most things that could be hiding down here, including the guardsmen. Sergeant Gomez in particular deserved a serious beating.

He had also ordered radio silence, which was odd given that as far as he knew the bugs couldn't listen in on their radio.

He wondered how the hell this idiot made sergeant, but part of him said that he probably didn't want to know.

He stared into the darkness, wherever the guardsmen weren't looking with their flashlights, he wasn't sure, but he though he saw movement. Though it could easily be imagined, for someone who said they wanted to keep low profile they were making an awful lot of noise, which hopefully would make them the first targets when they were inevitably ambushed. If it was who he though it was he wished them bon appetite. The more time they spent eating the less time they spent pursuing.

"Remember. Only HE grenades, we don't want to harm any valuable equipment."

Then again it was possible that the sheer stupidity ruined the taste. He'd just have to run faster.
_________________________________________________________________

Miku was getting jittery, she could swear she heard noises all around her, but the three guardsmen around her said they heard nothing. As trained soldiers they should be able to recognize threats a lot better than she could. It did comfort her, a little. She had no idea just how much sharper her senses were. As far as she knew the only difference between her and them was that their ears were odd. She though round ears looked kinda cute though.

Unlike Mur'Phon and Gordonius she wasn't treated as a prisoner. When they had realized she had suffered memory loss they had figured she was just some human who went along because she had no idea what else to do. Not alien or willing heretic as the other two were considered. Therefore she was in the middle of the group of three guardsmen as protected as she could be. She considered herself a prisoner though. So if she though she could give them the slip without running straight into the arms of monsters she would have. She did not like the way these people looked at her. And while it had only been a day or so she had known both Mur'Phon and Gordonius her entire remembered life. Leaving them hanging felt very wrong, so she had to help them somehow. Her conscience told her they weren't bad people who deserved what they were going to get, and in the absence of any cultural impulses or upbringing that had been erased with the rest of her memory her conscience was the only guide line she had.

Her conscience had it been an actual person would be rather pissed about being ignored as long as it had, and now she suddenly wanted it to practically run her life. Both her sense of self and her subconscious would have drawn weapons and threatened bodily harm if it had tried to pull back and let things go as they used to though. They too had hated it before and were finally starting to like how things were going. Her old memories were not missed and had they been able to they would have pushed them into the barrel of a Nova cannon and blown them clear to the Terra defense grid to be blown up there. As it was they were the equalent of put into a safe, wielded shut, and dumped in the deepest most inaccessible ocean in existence, then taking the whole planet the ocean was on and put inside a cage of the webway, then taking the whole damn webway and dump it into a warp rift, then post armed sentries at the entrance with shoot to kill orders if anything ever came back out, really itchy fingered sentries with enough firepower to make an imperial battlefleet envious. The rest of her mind would have been partying non-stop ever since.

Miku was however unaware that she indivertibly was making the dangerous situation somewhat worse. It wasn't really her fault; the guardsmen around her were really poor grade for guardsmen, so the one bringing up the rear should have had more self control. However there was the fact that her walk was both very animated and very feminine, making the view from behind quite distracting. The kind of distracting that could cause traffic accidents on a regular basis. For a guardsman who if ever got within ten meters of a commissar the universe would strike dead on the spot to get it over with so it could take a break early it was bound to cause trouble. Right now Abaddon could have led a conga line of black legion terminators while Leman Russ and the rest of the lost primarches tried to attack them with giant beer kegs in his sector and he wouldn't have noticed.

This also meant that the monsters tasked with cutting off their route of retreat really could have saved themselves the bother of doing it stealthily.
___________________________________________________________________

Gordonus looked at the power plant again.

"Are you really sure you want me to do this?"

"For the third time: Yes!!! Now just do it."

"Sometimes it's better to live in ignorance you know, better to not feel terror for those last few moments. Makes it go quicker subjectively. Or so I'm told. And it will be a big hint for the current residents that we are down here."

The room was darkened. The three troopers were covering two doors, the dark hallways beyond seemingly still and silent. They didn't trust the tech priest, but he was the only one qualified for this on hand so they figured he would do it properly at gunpoint. He was however a bit reluctant. It seemed contrary to survival to turn on the power making it clear for everyone that there were people down here. Might as well all cover themselves in barbeque sauce and just yell for them to come eat them.

"If you don't turn on the power right now I'll blow your frakking head of heretic!"

Of course, when it came between possible death later and certain death now the choice was simple, the ambull leftovers he was carrying could hopefully distract them for a moment, at least if he tossed them onto one of the guardsmen. It would have to do in place of barbeque sauce.

The proper rituals were quick, just a short prayer, only two full minutes, and then lean down and flip a tiny switch. The power plants began humming and lights came on.

He looked down the corridor they had come.

"Ah. Just as I expected, an ambush."
__________________________________________________________________

When the lights came back on Mur'Phon had a fair idea of what to expect. His hands reached instinctively for weapons that weren't there. He called out even before he saw them, so sure they were going to be there that he didn't hesitate at all.

"Tyranids!"

Gomez spun around, it was indeed Tyranids, The fast lethal Genestealers. And they were clearly intent on getting in close in hand to take them hand to hand, or more correctly hand to claw.

Mur'Phon was terrified. These were the strong fast beasts who implanted their own overriding DNA into you and turned you into an unwitting puppet of the hive mind. Lightening fast with claws that could shred through the most powerful armor there was as it was well used tissue paper. As the guide put it, rape you and make you turn out little baby genestealer hybrids who grew up to be living warp radio amateurs inviting their whole damned extended family. These were the kind of overwhelming in-laws that ate you out of your home, had personalities that just chewed you up, and tended to be a real bother for the neighbors.

Gomez stood frozen; he had never seen any actual fighting in his short career as a soldier. So facing these terrible fast clawed beasts it was just too much for him. He locked up and just stood there.

Two of his comrades outright panicked and opened out with ill aimed fully automatic fire from their weapons at what looked like the largest mass. The sheer firepower they put out keeping them back, but they would shoot up their ammo in seconds and then they'd be on them.

Mur'Phon was more interested in escape. There were two groups, the one guarding the way deeper into the complex and one blocking their retreat. The group guarding the way deeper into the complex was small, most defiantly just intended to pen them in and not be the primary killers.

The main force was behind them. It was a veritable sea of tyranids as far as he could see. No way in hell he could punch his way through that. A single well placed frag grenade was all he would need to punch through the forward force. As the group only carried HE grenades however it was going to get interesting. He needed to improvise.

All of this flashed through his mind before the two panicked troopers behind him had fired five shots. He had always had a quick mind in crisis situations.

And the answer suggested itself immediately. After all a fragmentation grenade was merely a HE charge around a shell suited to cause fragmentation. And when you though it over... Yeah that could work. It was better than die doing nothing atleast.

The last trooper started lobbing HE grenades at the main mass to little effect. He didn't notice immediately that someone had just grabbed his lasgun.

Gomez as a person had always though of himself as a great and brave person. Someone who could handle anything the universe tossed at him. He had envisioned himself as the next Cain, the next great hero of the Imperium. Of course very few live up to their own idealized version of themselves. He fell shorter than most.

He felt someone ripping something away from his harness. He felt something being pressed into his hand. He was too terrified to care that it was the Tau.

"Here hold this." Mur'Phon said as he forced the HE grenade into his hand. Making sure the handle was being held firm.

The two behind him were just about out of ammo. The front group was almost upon them. If this failed he would be the first one taken down. It was do or die time.

Mur'Phon forcefully raised Gomez's arm and pushed him forward. The arm coming straight up in the face in the front and center tyranid.

It reacted the way instinct told it to. It bit. The arm came off and Gomez screamed. The Tyranid swallowed by instinct as to not waste food but also not have it jaws tied up in the general fighting. This went fast; the grenade had been armed the moment the arm had been bit off. And now it was getting deep inside the 'Nid.

The 'Nid lashed out against Gomez, it's claw sinking deep into his chest area, but not hitting anything instantly lethal, he kept screaming.

The grenade blew. As it blew up the energy had nowhere to go. No quick ways to expand. The chitin was blown apart, the natural armor proving to be a very lethal fragmentation shell. Gomez died instantly under the hail of organic shrapnel. The 'Nids around the improvised bomb didn't fair any better. The farthest back Genestealer was far enough back that it wasn't killed instantly, but it was dying and disabled.

Mur'Phon stood up from his crouch where he had been shielding his head. Using Gomez as a shield and relying on his armor had gotten him through unscathed save a few small dents in his suit and a small scratch on his chin that bled slightly the purple cobolt rich blood of the Tau.

He brought up the lasgun he had stolen from Gomez and fired a short burst into the head of the critically wounded genestealer. Never hurt to be sure. Behind him the gunfire stopped. They had run out of ammo and were desperately reloading before the horde reached them. They wouldn't make it. They were already upon them. The grenadier reached desperately for his lasgun finding it missing.

As the last scream died Mur'Phon spun around, He fired a long burst across the Tyranids. While it was full auto this was carefully placed at the height where it did the most good against the entire front row. The corpses that collapsed were a tin line covering the entire corridor. It stalled their advance for a critical second as he repeated it with the second rank. Then the lasgun was empty, full auto like that wasted a lot of shot no matter how you did it. He discarded it and started unslinging the second lasgun he'd grabbed in the general melee as he started to run. The other lasgun clattered to the floor. Occasionally he'd fire a short burst behind him to try and keep the swarm back a bit longer

The entire fight so far had taken less than a minute.
_________________________________________________________________

The Guide on Tyranids:

"These guys I just plain hate. They just won't frakking give up. They are so damn many too. Their basic troops are so inferior that you can dispatch them by the dozens easily, but unfortunately they often come in hundreds for every one of us. And despite their appearances they aren't beasts. They can be both cunning and intelligent when it's called for. And these guys will not listen to any short of talk whatsoever. Even Orks listen somewhat even if getting any deals done is impossible, but the Tyranids will never listen. In short insulting them will grow boring soon so one of the most popular frontline games in static lines just became a lot less interesting. A shame since I really enjoy a good insult duel with the Gue'La and Orks.

Their motivation is simple: Dinner. They see you, your mates and everyone else merely as a giant 'all you can eat' buffet. This is the only motivation I've discovered. And apart from delaying them by feeding people you don't like to them it's not very useful on the battlefield.

The details I have managed to gather are sketchy, but from what bits and pieces I have gathered from intercepted imperial reports and odd stories they can in the end be called one being. One hive mind that is in effect one individual and all the other smaller creatures are but cells of this giant organism all through a trickling down system of 'officers' or more accurately synapse creatures that act as natural communications relays for their troops. Take them out and command and control is lost. Of course, it knows this too. That is what makes things interesting.

On another note, I wonder if their most basic creatures could be converted into good pets somehow. I kinda like the idea of pets with guns and teeth that big."

*Article continues on the various types of creatures.*

____________________________________________________________________
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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Quite some distance away a short time earlier Miku walked a bit faster and caught up to the soldier in front of her and tapped his shoulder gently

"May I ask something?"

"Well sure Ma'am, go right ahead." The trooper was a young and eager soldier who had a strong sense of duty. He was honest, but not really that competent. He tried so very hard, but he simply didn't have an aptitude for killing. Even so he was the kind of person willing to put everything on the line to protect people he cared about, his life, even his very soul if necessary. Unlike the others he was a decent person. Also unlike the others he was however open minded enough to consider that maybe the alien had a point about what might be hiding down here. He hadn't said so however.

"Well… The soldier behind me muttered how he really wanted to 'tap that ass', I was wondering if you could tell me what that meant?"

The soldier was caught flat footed.

"Ah… Well… It's a very inappropriate way to tell someone that he wants to well… 'Do it' with a particular girl"

"Do what?" Weather it was culture or memory loss that was unsure. But right now the soldier wished he could just sink into the ground and disappear.

"Well I…" He tried to find a way to say it. He was too polite to really say it straight out. And he wasn't sure how to put it best.

That was when the lights came on saving him the bother.

"Ah good. Now we can see where we are going at last. Now we just…." The team leader trailed off as the pursuers in darkness suddenly were visible.

Miku froze for a second. Her mind racing, to better illustrate we will use a representive ship command.

The auger officer who was watching the screens for that close defense region screamed like a little girl when the long toothy face of the Genestealers came into sight. Then called he called in to his section leader.

His section leader called it to the bridge, and then promptly fainted.

The bridge crew ran around like headless chicken until the captain said decisive action was needed. Despite being comforting they couldn't just keep running in circles. If for nothing else than that they'd wear the floor badly.

The XO asked what kind of decisive action. The captain shrugged and said that they should press the Big Red Button which was followed by dramatic lightening (Despite being in space) and a lot of screaming.

After everyone stopped screaming at the prospect the Captain walked over and pressed the button.

Her mind was now on fully automatic. The Tyranids terrified her to the very core. She wanted to curl up and shiver, she wanted to run away, most of all she wanted them gone. Her finely tuned fighting instincts saw only one way of making them go away.

The soldier she had just asked took a step backwards when her hand shot out and ripped his combat knife loose. She charged straight towards the larger rear force grabbing the knife of the poorly disciplined rear guard trooper as she passed.

Then she gave a terrifying fighting scream and leapt. And Severed Genestealer limbs and heads started flying.
_________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon turned left at a run to avoid yet another Tyranid force. They were everywhere, it was only a matter of time before they pinned him and killed him. However he outright refused to surrender to what seemed inevitable. He was going to go the way he came in. Kicking and screaming in anger.

Another force came into view and he turned right. He was rapidly running out of options. And without the mapping system on the helmet he had no idea where he was heading. His sense of direction wasn't really that great. Without aids he could get lost in a 10 by 10 meter training dome. The helmet navigation systems usually offset it, but of course that was still in the Valkyrie.

He turned left again. A dead end! A closed door at the end blocked further progress. He hit the opening panel to no effect, and then spun around. This was it. It was time to stop running.

Just as the swarm turned the corner the door slid open with a hiss, a pair of arms grabbed him and dragged him in and the door slid shut.

______________________________________________________________

"I must admit. I'm surprised that you found your way here so quick." Gordonius said. There was just him and a guardsman in the now locked down power room. The vents were closed, but there was enough air to last for a while.

"What do you mean?"

"Well on the monitors you were taking the single fastest way straight to the power room. I had no idea you knew that much about the layout."

"Uh… Well… Where are the other two guardsmen?"

"They panicked and ran out that door, then were ambushed by genestealers hiding out of sight." He gestured to the other door.

"What happened to your four guardsmen?"

"They couldn't run fast enough." Mur'Phon lied. No need to admit he had practically fed them to the 'Nids to get away himself

"Ah." Gordonius wasn't fooled, but he figured there weren't any point in letting the last guardsman know they'd sacrifice him in a heartbeat to save their own butts. It might make him a bit jittery.

"So got any plans to get out of here?" Mur'Phon knew that Gordonius wasn't fooled, he wasn't intending to fool him anyway. He was starting to like the tech priest and wouldn't use him as fodder unless it was absolutely necessary

"None. I was planning to just set the power core to overload and blow them all up. Let the Omnissiah take care of them the most direct way he can."

"Well… That certainly is one hell of a way to end this day, but we'll keep that as plan B okay?" Mur'Phon didn't want to give up quite yet.

"As you wish, but I can't see any way we can get out unless we had some major distraction."

"Like say... Miku going psycho and cutting through the horde like a massive barrage of submunition rail gun rounds?" Mur'Phon said as he flipped through the monitors.

Gordonius looked over his shoulder.

"By the Omnissiah. Look at her go!" She was definitely going to last a while. Nothing could touch her and on the screen she seemed merely a blur. She was a distortion that whenever it touched a 'nid bits of it were sent flying.

"That explains why there were so few 'nids in my way. They are all busy trying to take down that single hard prey."

"Yes. The beasts outside are pulling back leaving only a token guard force."

"Set the destruction for two hours. That should give us enough time to get out and be safely away before it blows."

"See to it. Then check if there are any armories nearby we can use."

"On it."

Neither of them noticed the small rune that said the facility was transmitting something.
__________________________________________________________________

The Guardsmen behind Miku tried to keep the horde back as much they could. More and more were swarming and it was only a matter of time before she got overwhelmed despite being likely the most lethal individual ever to set foot on this planet.

One of them had died at the claws of a Genestealer that got too close. The other two were getting closer and closer to Miku. Usually they'd appreciate the chance to get that close to a pretty girl, but given that she was in whirling death mode it was not something they were comfortable with. And currently despair was slowly getting overwhelming. Soon they would be out of ammo too.

____________________________________________________________

The Valkyrie was good to go any second. They had gotten a brief scream from Gomez a few minutes ago then nothing. They were holding off from fleeing on a desperate hope that some survivors got out.
____________________________________________________________

Miku was tiring, she didn't really notice it, but she couldn't keep it up much longer. It was looking really bleak now.

Which made the shock when a barrage of frag grenades burst in the midst of the rear pinning force that much greater.

The Guardsman besides Mur'Phon laughed in triumph as they both fired yet another salvo from the launchers they had acquisitioned. Mur'Phon was simply grinning like a madman.

A side corridor with reinforcements was deep fried from the Flamer Gordonius was wielding. All of them were loaded down with as much weaponry as they could carry, it was heavy, but they didn't expect to have to carry it for long.

Right now they packed more firepower than a first person shooter player usually did. Mur'Phon fired the last grenade from his launcher and discarded it grabbing a shotgun instead. The double action shotgun proved rather painful for the Genestealers in point blank as yet another was blown clear across the room.

"C'mon guys! We've got the door open, but can't hold it for long so get your asses moving now!"

If Miku hadn't been tired she likely wouldn't have heard. She would have been too intent on killing the Tyranids. As it was it was somewhere the monsters weren't. It was the closest to a safe place down here. She turned and ran. The polite guardsman didn't run fast enough and screamed as a genestealer sunk its claws into him. Gordonius hit them both with a flamer burst.

Mur'Phon emptied the shotgun then discarded it in favor of a lasgun again.

"Go! Go! GO!"

The breakneck pace run was taking its toll. Miku kept up, but the last guardsman with her fell behind. His screams echoed down the hall.

The Tyranids were gaining. They were practically flying up the stairs now, but even so they were gaining. They could see the door now, the dark rectangle that offered an escape from this nightmare. They got closer, closer.

The Genestealers got closer too. It seemed certain they would catch them. Then they were through. Somehow they were through.

The last guardsman slowed. His mind too shocked. For some absurd reason he assumed he was safe and fatigue made him drop.
The Genestealers didn't stop though. They swarmed out and over the guardsman, he slowed them an instant allowing the last three survivors a bit more lead on the horde behind them.

Then the valkyrie took off.

Mur'Phon gritted his teeth in desperation. They had come so close! Then it turned to disbelief followed by understanding. It was turning towards them!

"Everybody drop now!" He yelled as he dropped.

Just in time too. The Multilasers flared and the horde behind them was blown back. There was no way they could handle that much overkill coming out from a tight doorway offering an excellent chokepoint for the rapid fire heavy lasers to hit. The Valkyrie hovered low. Mur'Phon crawled out of the field of fire and gestured for the other two to follow. It was waiting for them to come aboard. Why he didn't know. Perhaps they hadn't realized all the troopers were dead. Perhaps they figured the risk to save the sole person they though was innocent was worth it? At any rate he was grateful.

They ran the last few meters and practically threw themselves on board.

"Take off now!"

"Where are the others?!" The Pilot half protested half asked.

"Dead or infested, either way we can't help them."

The pilot grimly put his hands on the throttle and set them on a path upwards. The Tau might be lying, but the odds of the soldiers coming out of that alive were minimal. So there really was no choice.

Then the first explosion rattled the ship and part of the facility blew up. The pilot put throttle to maximum, but the main blast still nearly swatted it out of the sky

Mur'Phon was speechless for a second. Gordonius looked abashed. Then Mur'Phon turned towards Gordonius anger evident on his blue/grey face.

"Two hours you said!"

"Er... Oops?"

"I made it clear we wanted plenty of time to get clear and somehow you manage to set it up so we almost get deep fried unless we had been motivated by a huge horde of ravenous aliens to run slightly faster!"

"I assure you I don't know why this happened. The machine spirit must have been grumpy."

"GRUMPY?!"

"Okay terminally suicidal then. Why it wasn't willing to talk about it I don't know. I consider myself fairly good at motivating machine spirits to live. Though might not work so well since we were going to blow it up anyway."

Mur'Phon swallowed an acidic reply and glared at him.

Couldn't the universe just leave him alone?
Chapter 6: Binge drinking.

The valkyrie dropship raced upwards away from the fireball now dimishing on the planet above. It's five occupants all acutely aware that even this was but a temporary respite against the Tyranid fleet closing it's noose around the system. In short it was just the kind of thing to make a shitty day even worse.

"Valkyrie Delta 15 to Irishman. We're coming in to land." The pilot said.

"Acknowledged Delta 15. Any survivors?"

"Three...." He was about to continue when he heard the noise of a weapon being armed.

"Do not tell them who we are." Mur'Phon whispered with deadly intensity. The pilot swallowed.

"Only three made it out."

"Tell the captain we want to meet him when we come aboard." The Valkyrie pilot was worried. He might be sacrificing his soul here. Then again might lose the soul on one hand and be guaranteed killed by an alien on the other wasn't that hard a choice.

"Our commander says he wants to talk with your captain in person."

Mur'Phon leaned back. Gun across his lap to get up and shoot fast if the pilot tried to betray them.

Miku looked over. "What insane plan have you cooked up now?"

Mur'Phon didn't turn. "Take the command crew hostage, either force them to warp jump or take us to a ship that can. Prefferably into Tau space so I can get home."

"You'll just leave millions of people to get eaten?"

"Well... It's not like it's much I can do. It'd be like attacking a Squiggoth with a pointy stick."

"Well that isn't as much of a mismatch as it sounds actually. There are a suprising ammount of applications for a sharp enough stick. 5360 to be exact that we have discovered so far." Gordonius interjected.

"You guys research applications for sharp sticks? What the hell is that for?"

"Well someone got to do it and it's our responsibility in the admech to know everything there is about technology, even the simple ones."

"How many people are there on that world?"

"On Tarvin A? 42 Millions. A lot of those in the capital of Douglas."

"42 Million...." Miku looked torn.

"Well... That's not really much for a growing hive fleet. Who knows maybe we could convince it to go snack on a hive world or something instead." Mur'Phon commented.

Miku just looked away.

_____________________________________________________________

Captain Darian Jorik entered the shuttle bay. He saw the Valkyrie being prepared to dock. He wondered what was so important. He fought back depression yet again. They were all likely going to be dead in a few days.

He had tried to join the imperial navy at a young age, but the navy had never recruited when he was trying. So he had joined the merchant marine instead. Working on an insystem fuel freighter was a slap to the face, but he had handled it. Now he and the crew he had worked with for decades were all going to be lunch.

He was surprised anyone had gotten up alive. Sergeant Gomez had frankly struck him as an imbecile.

The valkyrie came to a halt on the hangar deck and the doors slip open…

… Revealing a figure in battle armour manning the door mounted heavy bolter facing him. If he had been able to see through the helmet he'd have been able to see Mur'Phon grinning so wide he was sure it was stretching the helmet.

"Good evening Captain. I hope you don't mind but we're commandeering this vessel."

_____________________________________________________________

Gamma squadron were fighting desperately to slow down the overwhelming force of Tyranids. One cruiser was badly battered and would under any normal circumstances have tried to break for it already, but the Captain had refused a direct order to retreat and was staying in the fight. The four cruisers had been in system for a quick and basic maintenance in a safe port before resuming deep space patrol and was the only powerful naval force in system right now. They had served together for centuries and it somehow felt fitting that when they were going to die they were going to die together.

The Tyranids weren't even really bothering to go after them. The malicious mind controlling the fleet saw that these ships couldn't cause enough damage no matter what they did and so far didn't attack them unless they came within their weapon range and instead just kept heading towards the planet to grab the chow for today. They were always more tasty when they had a biosphere this diverse.

For every crewman and officer aboard the squadron there was a stubborn refusal against giving in. They grimly went back to their duty again and again to wear the enemy down. They prayed to the God Emperor for a miracle, for some way to allow them to save millions of innocents with nowhere to run.

What happened would give the phrase "The Emperor works in mysterious ways" a whole new meaning and confuse the minostorium for decades to come.

____________________________________________________________

The bridge was quiet. Mur'Phon was covering Darian with his carbine. Mur'Phon had just ascertained that the ship couldn't flee the system and demanded that Darian ordered his crew to take the ship to another that could. Darian was wrestling. He did not want to give in to a xeno, but on the other hand such a ship could evacuate large people. He was however one of the few people in the system who had dealt with the eldar raiders before and would not let one of them get to one more human he could. He had yet to meet another of her kind that wasn't an utter sadist despite how she looked cuter than a whole army of large eyed puppy collies, looks could be very deceptive as he knew from a life's experience. His entire bridge crew knew as well and he had managed to slip orders that if it came to shooting take her out first, better to be killed quick by the Tau than slowly by her. This made what happened next even more of a shock.

"You can't just run away! We got to do something!" Miku exclaimed.

"We've been over this before. There is nothing we can do." The Tau replied in a voice that despite the helmet sounded rather weary and resigned, though not a trace of guilt.

"All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing." Miku said. She wasn't sure where she had heard that one; she hadn't even known she had heard that quote until it just fell out of her mouth. She agreed with the statement wholeheartedly however. And she was wondering why the entire bridge crew was staring at her slack jawed. She was fairly sure she hadn't made that quote up after all.

"Do what? Charge madly in and ram a command ship forcing one of their five or so other command ships to take over? It's insane and will get us all killed for nothing."

"That was the case down there too, yet you and Gordonius came for us. You could just as easily have ditched us and got out safe without firing a shot."

"That was different. It was actually possible." Mur'Phon stated calmly.

"Well actually. The odds of us succeeding were 3051 to 1." Gordonius interjected. Mur'Phon glared at him, and then switched tactics.
"Suppose I agree to try and help what do you want me to do?" She had to concede that there was nothing that could be done.

"I don't know. You are the soldier here. Take stock of what you have on hand and see what can be done with it?" Miku answered. She was a bit doubtful now that it came down to that directly.

He turned to the captain again.

"How many weapons do you have onboard?"

"Not much. A few dozen shotguns and a handful of auto and lasguns."

"And what is your cargo."

"Fifty thousand tons of fuel."

"So we could if we decided to go suicidal make a nice fire ship. Promethium right?"

"No actually. Tarvin B is unusually short of the stuff so we use primarily an alternate stuff we can produce plenty of."

"What kind of fuel."

"Fuel grade Alcohol. Depending on the refinery 90-99% pure alcohol. And we currently have a very high quality load."

Mur'Phon's helmet hid his expression which to comedians the galaxy over was a tragedy of epic proportions.
___________________________________________________________

"You are sure this will work." Mur'Phon asked.

"Of course not! It has never been tested. However most toxins tested have always had a good effect initially so we should get some reaction provided nobody has been desperate enough to try this before." Gordonius was ecstatic. This was just the kind of project he longed for; Difficult, innovative, major and nuts. There was a reason he'd been pawned off to a freighter in the ass-end of nowhere by the Ad-mech.

"What happens if somebody has tried it before?" Mur'Phon was frankly worried by the insane grin that had been plastered on Gordonius's face ever since he announced his idea.

"Most likely it'll just be seriously pissed off and take it's time in killing us. Nothing major."

Mur'Phon swallowed whatever reply he had and backed off a bit as the machinery he was working with right now didn't look that safe

"I have hailed the military ships and told them that we recommend they stay back until we have made our run." Captain Jorik once he'd heard the plan had said himself fully willing to cooperate on the single condition that all crew that could be spared were allowed to jettison themselves in life pods before contact. Mur'Phon had agreed. It'd be a great way to save ammunition if they decided to try and kill him. To quote the guide: When in the field life is cheap, ammunition isn't.

"So… We stay aboard just enough to start pumping in the booze and then scram into escape pods and get to safety?" Miku had been the one who wanted to do something, but she felt superfluous. She didn't have any technical skills that she knew of. And while she had discovered that she could seriously kick ass in a fight, no asses seemed to need kicking. The spikes on her boots made a lot more sense now though.

"That's the plan." Mur'Phon confirmed ejecting and reinserting the clip of the carbine yet again.

"Just one thing I don't get. What is an Irishman?" Miku asked.

"Well according to ancient legends it was a creature on holy terra that had beer for blood…." Gordonius launched into a full tale on what legends claimed. Within minutes everyone hoped the Tyranids would just get there and try to eat them already.
__________________________________________________________

The freighter had been deemed no threat to the hive fleet when it suddenly went to all ahead full and showed that it could do a surprising speed.

The hive mind wasn't worried, even if it went kamikaze it wouldn't do much damage.

When it immediately afterwards went to burn retros in front of the command ship it assumed that since it had been seen recovering a military dropship the troops were trying to face the hive fleet in boarding actions.

Given the immense numerical advantage it was the tyranid equalent of happy to oblige them.

They'd make a nice appetizer before the main event.
____________________________________________________________

"Why are we doing this again?" Mur'Phon asked as he handed some tool he had no idea what was called to Gordonius.

"Because a really good looking woman asked us to, and we really want to stay on her good side if she ever should recover her memories and decide to personally vivisect anyone she doesn't like."

"So she is good looking? I was never quite sure on that. Definitely not my type. I can never quite figure out why you humans find humps on the chest so attractive for instance." Mur'Phon elected not to dwell on the vivisection part.

"You Tau have no idea what you are missing out on then." A young crewman who had volunteered to help on this insane plan asked. Mur'Phon though his name was Finn or Flinn something like that.

"Maybe so. But a nicely shaped Fire Caste female is in my eyes far better looking than any human woman will ever be."

"I got to disagree there." The human replied.

"I can accept that. We're atleast both very sincere."

That was when the general alert started. Mur'Phon unslung his carbine and loaded the grenade launcher.

"That's our signal. Gordonius hurry up. Finn…"

"Flinn."

"Okay Flinn get over to your pump station. We've got a hive fleet to drink under the table."
____________________________________________________________

Gamma squadron waited. They had heard the request from the 'Irishman' and while they couldn't see what that single ship could do they wouldn't lose much from staying away for a few minutes.

Though now they couldn't figure out what the hell the ship was trying to do. Most of their crew seemed to be abandoning ship. Were they going to self destruct in the face of the hive ship? That didn't really fit with their request to hold off.

What the hell were they doing?
____________________________________________________________

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The distance was long, but no problem for her mind. She searched the vision again. Something was different. She had searched every possibility, but now reality and her vision had diverged and she had no idea why.

A freighter was somewhere else in reality than it had been in any of the alternative visions she had seen. She couldn't see any divergence even now though. As if it hadn't happened yet.

This was not a big deal by itself, but it was worrisome, if this was different what else would turn out different? Suddenly reality was following a timeline that had not seemed possible a few hours ago. Carefully laid plans might not be correct after all. It was like the universe was changing things around just for the hell of it.

Damn it! It wasn't supposed to do that!
___________________________________________________________

The trio of odd travellers stood at one of the critical junctures in the pump system to ensure everything ran smoothly.

"So what will go wrong?" Mur'Phon asked.

"You mean what can go wrong right?" Miku replied.

"In my experience they are usually the same." Mur'Phon said bleakly.

"Is he always this paranoid?" Miku asked?

"Well. From my observations so far he has a very good reason to be."

"Is it just me or do you two always gang up on me in arguments?"

"It is part of a grand conspiracy by the galaxy to make sure that wherever you go everything tries to make you suffer." Gordonius said with a straight face.

"Right. Give me names, addresses and access to heavy weaponry and we'll see about that." Mur'Phon shot back with a cheerful tone.

Miku just shook her head again. Soldier bantering still didn't make sense to her. Then the ship shuddered and creaked as if the entire ship was about to be crushed.

"Here they come!"

Miku listened to the creaking and though she faintly heard screams of crewmen too close to the breached sectors. The very though of Tyranids made her feel like a little frightened child hiding from monsters in her closet. Worse really, average monsters in closets stayed hidden as long as you were awake, Tyranids would just gun down the door and eat the child without bothering with protocol. If the monster union tried to raise a stink they'd simply send a hungry bio-Titan to represent them. The union would never bother them again after that.

That was when the hull was shredded. From what they saw there was a fleshy tunnel seething with the many Tyranid creatures.

Miku's first note was that the tunnel walls looked extremely icky. Then her fear and hate took over, she was about to leap when the massive pillar of liquid passing by her struck first.

Given the pressures involved it was like being hit by a megaton sized hammer wielded by a seriously pissed off anime girl. The lighter creatures were just outright crushed. The heavier ones were blown back down the tunnel and the large ship creature got a taste of millions of gallons of extremely high grade booze.

Unfortunately it had never managed to eat an Irishman and hence hadn't had the chance to gain inhuman alcohol tolerance.

Several gaunts came running around the corner, or they tried at least and instead tripped and rolled straight into the liquid wall still being sprayed and were crushed. Their coordination and intelligence shot to hell. They could barely stand straight, much less move and attack. It carried down from the hive ship to the lowliest grunt under it's command.

"That's our cue to get out of here." Mur'Phon turned around and immediately recoiled. That saved his life. Behind him was a force of Lictors somehow having snuck up on them without being noticed. Not by his helmet sensors and not by their friendly eldar. And worse yet; according to the guide all successful attempts to take out the Tyranid command system had somehow exempted the Lictors. They seemed to have their own command line down from the hive mind. Which meant that they weren't hit by the drunk effect!

"Oh frak!"

It seemed to go in slow motion as it raised its claw arm to strike, then suddenly at what looked like normal speed in comparison to the slow motion Miku hit them like a cyclone missile barrage and the carnage began. A sword like arm flashed past his head and stuck in the wall and vibrated with a "Twang".

There were only three of them so it was over in an instant and the entire corridor filled with gore and body parts.

"That… That was pretty thorough." Mur'Phon commented still badly shaken. Gordonius hadn't even finished turning around before it was over.

"Well this was some interesting redecoration all right, but shouldn't we move it?"

"That'd be a good idea." Mur'Phon agreed.

Miku was standing there as if in shock. Mur'Phon didn't bother to slow down to prompt her to go. He just grabbed her arm as he ran past and dragged her along.

_________________________________________________________________

Outside as the escape pods shot away from the dying Irishman Gamma squadron got the miracle they were praying for.

Enemy accuracy was so bad it'd been an insult for brain damaged orks, and their control on par with a sentinel walker on rollerblades.

Under those circumstances even a squadron could stop them. Wading into their midst and dishing out everything they had with point plank. A few scout ships were independent of the hive ships and didn't get affected, but they were too few, and too weak.

This battle was forever known as the greatest drunk fight known to man.
________________________________________________________________

NO! Blue eyes shot open.

The visions had all been erased and replaced with a new set. Somehow they had been stopped!

Didn't they know what they were doing? What great damage they were causing? Well of course not, they were lesser creatures who were blind to what was under their noses.

She went over the vision again. This time the past got a lot of attention. She found the point of divergence. Impossible that something that small could ruin so much, but yet it had done just that.

Why couldn't those fucking inferior beings just leave her great plan alone?! Why the hell was everything going wrong today?!
________________________________________________________

End act 1

Chapter 7: We're here!

"Did you notice how little went wrong during that last operation?" Gordonius commented as they waited for the escape pod to hit.

"Well yeah. It just proves that everything that happened to me is a coincidence." Mur'Phon commented as he took another mouthful of his field ration. He finally felt he had some vindication on that.

"Not really I have noted that when things went wrong they never went wrong for just you, but virtually everyone close by you. The tyranids were the only one on the first freighter that came out unscathed. So maybe it just got delayed."

"Are you saying it was their turn to have everything go wrong?" Miku asked.

"Or! It was just coincidences all along and finally it showed." Mur'Phon stated.

Miku looked at him quizzically and then turned to Gordonius.

"I had no idea it was possible to be that strongly in denial." She said. Mur'Phon just looked at her with a hurt expression.
____________________________________________________________

It was a peaceful and beautiful forest. Atleast on the surface, as with all forests the predators and prey were busy killing each other brutally and any observer wouldn't see it because they had the decency to do it in private. Which begs the question: If an ork maims an eldar in the forest and no humans are there to see it did it happen? The normal guard answer is of course usually a massive artillery bombardment of the spot suspected to have aliens so that it never finished the maiming. It was hard to be philosophical in the face of a nine barrel earthshaker salute.

The box had been hidden for almost forty thousand years. For some reason a recent rainfall had uncovered it. It was a stasis box, by sheer coincidence it finally started to fail then. Out of the small box came a small furry ball like creature. It was undeniably cute, but was a threat that could very well have an inquisitor declare exterminatus on the entire world. Because the small fur ball reproduced extremely fast. And while a herbivore it could eat most things. It started reproducing and within minutes there was a small heap of the creatures. Unless someone stumbled over them soon the entire planet was doomed.

That was when the escape pod hit them. It skidded along the ground crushing nearly all of them making a long impact skid mark in the soft ground.

Somehow a single one survived being dragged along. It was nearly impossible but it had happened, it was dying, but if it could reproduce just once before it died it could save it's species. It made it. A single new furball popped up next to them and if it had any human intelligence it would have felt a great satisfaction that it could die in peace knowing that it had saved its species.

That was when the escape pod hatch dropped down crushing both of them. Tribble-kind was finally wiped out.

"We're here!" Mur'Phon said cheerfully.
_____________________________________________________________

The local governor was not happy. Not happy at all.

"Are you saying a xeno saved our beautiful planet?!?!" He said his fat face red with anger.

"Yes sir. For the third time: Had not that xeno decided to hijack the fuel freighter the 'Irishman' we would have been hit full on by that splinter fleet and overwhelmed."

"It is impossible. The xeno are not more capable than mankind and therefore can't have come up with a plan that actually worked when our people did not!" The governor's newest advisor had been imposed from the outside to counteract the increasing Tau influence. Young, attractive and female it meant that she could sure as hell hold the governors attention and she was as anti-xeno as they came. She wasn't actually any secret agency, but she had been hand picked for the job subtly by the inquisition. It seemed the most elegant solution.

"We'll have to execute the entire crew for telling lies of course." She was however so stubborn that if the world didn't match her world view it had better go and change to fit it right now or she'd throw a hissy fit.

"Sorry Ma'am we can't find them. There was no list and escape pods came down all over the hemisphere."

"I don't care how. I want this lie suppressed and I want it suppressed now!"

"You will do no such thing." The dark hooded person who entered the room intoned.

"Because the resources needed to do that are needed elsewhere by the order of His Imperial's Majesty's inquisition."
___________________________________________________________

The camp was simple. The subject of discussion wasn't.

"Maybe you could ditch the armour. Then you won't be an enemy soldier." Miku suggested.

"Yeah great idea: Not only can they see I'm an alien, but they don't have to bother breaking out their big guns to kill me."

"Maybe they won't try to kill you. You did save their planet after all." Miku tried more weakly.

"Shouldn't there be a law against being that optimistic?" Mur'Phon said.

"We could grab a black coat and give your armour a dark paint job. It'd be an eye grabber, but orange armour is an even eye grabber."

"First it's not orange it is light brown. B-R-O-W-N. Secondly it works well in deserts. We are not repainting my armour."

He stopped as he saw both Miku and Gordonius closing in on him from angles with evil smiles, various pieces of gear from the escape pods in their hands.

"No, no, no. NOOOOOOOO!"
___________________________________________________________

"Aw c'mon. You look cool." Miku said.

"I'm not talking to you two." The armour had gotten a dark blue paintjob. Slabs of metal had been wielded onto the helmet besides the bar with the sensors giving it a T-shape. On them they had fastened darkened goggles to give the impression that this was where he looked out off, adding a few red glowing diodes inside them meant that in the dark his eyes looked intimidating red. All in all the part of the armour you saw looked very little like something the Tau made.

Most of it was covered under a dark cloak though making the overall impact really dark and intimidating. Where they had gotten all this stuff was beyond Mur'Phon. He had no idea you could get so much out of an imperial escape pod. He had to remember never to use one again.

"There is indeed several independents of the Imperium that run around looking like that. Bounty hunters, lower class body guards, a few mercenaries and people like that." Gordonius commented.

"Low lives in other words."

"Well yes. But better than walking around being identified as a non-human and having every soldier wannabe on the hemisphere declare Tau season. You might even earn a few credits."

Mur'Phon sighed. They had a point. He had to keep a practical view on this. Still, for all he might moan and complain about his Empire's leadership (Well out of earshot of said leadership of course, There wasn't a star nation in the galaxy that had free speech as far as he knew) his job was one of the few things he took pride in. And the armour was an extension of that. Which meant that doing something like this was one of the few things Mur'Phon was uncomfortable with doing even in the name of survival.

"Well what can you tell me about this world?"

"Tarvin A is an eccentric world, it was up until recently fully feudal with comparative technology level. For unknown reasons sector command decided to try and uplift the world to more civilized standards starting roughly twenty years ago. Up until then all modern technology had been in space or on Tarvin B."

"Right I though the research lab looked older than twenty years, but what makes this world so eccentric?"

"The fact that so far the uplift project has met massive complications, mostly the nobility who are scared of the technology and have worked to keep it out anyway possible, which means that this world is a curious amalgam of modern technology and primitivism. The fact that there are feral orks here also complicate the local situation a bit."

Mur'Phon spun around.

"You never said anything about Orks?!" They had been one of the most common alien visitors on Tash'Var and had horrible manners to put it mildly. Their main hobby was fighting, but after that they tended to have a very simple approach to things: They'd enslave anything that could be enslaved, what wasn't practical to enslave (Or if they happened to be hungry) they'd eat, what couldn't be eaten they looted, what couldn't be looted they blew up to see a pretty explosion.

It was rumoured that they had descended from the creature 'soccer hooligans' who according to old legends had a very similar approach to things.

Gordonius seemed fairly undisturbed by Mur'Phon's reaction though.

"You never asked, and they are all supposedly contained within a quarantine zone pending the arrival of enough forces to wipe them out completely."

"Supposedly?" Mur'Phon's voice had the calm of Abaddon the Despoiler getting bad news before he had gotten his morning coffee, Tau from Tash'Var hated Orks more than the rest of the Tau empire, in fact you'd be hard pressed to find any planet in the galaxy with more hate for Orks than Tash'Var, they existed, but they weren't many.

"Well, since we have you along I figure it is inevitable that sooner or later we run into them, and as we are currently outside the quarantine zone that means they'll have to get out of it."

Mur'Phon glared at Gordonius in silence. Miku had to resist the urge to laugh.
_________________________________________________________

The morning was beautiful; the fragments of the hive fleet burning up had made it a spectacular night, as it was still falling the sun reflecting off it made for a stunning view.

Miku would have preferred if someone could please turn off the sun, or at least dim it a little. Dark Eldar live in dark places, and for the most part a life time of darkness meant that they had some serious problems handling bright light.

She was having a major headache due to all the light, comparable to what the hive mind was probably waking up with right now. The kind where it seemed the remainder of squat kind had gotten together in your head doing a combined mine enterprising/biggest keg party in history using heavy drills while having drunk enough to have made Leman Russ proud. And let's not even mention what they did with the dynamite.

She wondered how the hell her companions were handling all that light, they must be incredibly tough to take it so casually. She resolved not to complain about it then; she didn't want to be whiny.

The small town was quite a bit more advanced than the rest of the region, mostly due to being near the frontier, but also away from the nearest nobles, they faced a lot of problems with no inbred idiot to try and keep them primitive out of fear.

The gates and walls were primitive design, but reinforced by modern materials making them potent defensive works against raiders and other small scale engagements. The lack of military grade weaponry would make them an easy training exercise against proper forces. Mur'Phon noted fifteen ways on approach that his cadre could have taken this place out with minimal losses. Granted fourteen of them would be deemed so insane by Tau standards that only Mur'Phon could think them up, but the by the by the book approach should have been able to work too in any case.

The city streets were dirty, but no more than any city. The few people in the streets had simple clothes, but seemed well enough off.

Miku was squinting her eyes, as the day got brighter her headache was getting worse. Which was why she didn't see the three people that were getting out of the large blocky building in front of her while visible shaking on their hands and holding large bags. She walked straight into one of them making him drop his bag and credit chits spill out all over the street.

"Oh I'm so sorry..." Miku's apology was cut short as the two other crooks reached for guns.

"Back off! We won't be taken alive." Mur'Phon's weapon was up and ready with a soft, but ominous hum of the safety being taken off and the click from Gordonius's shotgun wasn't very comforting either.

"Good, that makes it easier for us. You absolutely sure you mean that right?" Mur'Phon commented. Their weapons were small civilian grade autopistols. They'd just bounce off his armour if they tried to shoot him, but his comrades were another matter.

The crooks however were astute enough (barely) to recognize military professionalism when they saw it and knew they'd lose any shootout. The one who had dropped the bag grabbed Miku and put a pistol to her head using her as shield.

"Back off or the girl gets it!"

Mur'Phon sighed, how stupid could you get?

"Miku kick their asses." He was frankly surprised that she had let herself be grabbed in the first place.

"I don't want to hurt anyone." She replied simply.

Inside his helmet Mur'Phon was gaping.

"Uh? I didn't quite get that. In case you haven't noticed they are holding a gun to your head and threatening to kill you!"

"I don't think two wrongs make a right. There has to be some way to solve this peacefully right?" Her big black eyes were remiscient of the eyes of a baby seal. In all stories this kind of pleading would make the hero stupidly let the villains get away and therefore be forced to deal with them later, but overall it'd earn him brownie points with the chick so it'd be worth it.

However baby seals had been extinct for millennia. It was doubtful that any of Mur'Phons ancestors had even walked the galaxy at the same time as baby seals.

Of course his ancestors were the great hunters of the plains of the Tau homeworld. If his great great (^1000 or so) grandfather had encountered a baby seal he would have looked at it and said:

"Aw how cute..."

Which would have immediately have been followed by:

"...I wonder cuteness tastes."

Followed by a quick, efficient, brutal and painful (for the seal) baby seal clubbing he'd fry it on a stick over open fire. He'd think it was not bad at all and in the future go out of his way to kill any such beings he came across for dinner.

Back to the present Mur'Phon was a bit more civilized, but due to the fact that he was also entirely un-attracted to more human/eldar females, still quite able to resist it. He was at a bit of a loss how to handle it.

"Uh... What?" One of the crooks said.

"Shut up amateur. The Pro's are talking." The force behind this statement made the crook shut up just like that. He turned to Miku, the sudden intervention had brought a solution into focus.

"Okay, in that case you give me no choice."

He lifted the carbine to his shoulder.

"Kick their asses or I'll blow their heads off. That way you will be saving their lives. Nobody takes any of my friends hostage"

"Are you sure that you'll shoot them?" She said worried.

"Yes, absolutely."

"Oh all right..."

The one holding her hostage never even noticed that she had twisted her way out of his grasp and gotten her head out of the way of his gun when the boot arrived at his with the speed of a ferret with sugar rush.

The one on his left was about to give what he though was a smart reply when he was head butted and then tossed landing hard on his face in the dusty street.

The last one barely had time to register some movement before he was hit by three punches in lightening succession perfectly placed to take him out of action with minimal harm done and he collapsed as a sack of potatoes.
Miku had not even broken a sweat, once she had started moving these three had for all intents and purposes been standing still as far as she was concerned.

"I hope they'll all be okay?" She said, afraid that she might have been too hard on them, she hadn't intended to be so rough on them, and she just hadn't known they were that slow.

"Meh, they'll be fine." Mur'Phon said. The third one was groaning not knocked out yet. He was reaching out, presumably for his weapon.

Mur'Phon stepped forward putting his right hoof on his hand. The crook screamed.

"Don't bother. We're staying right here until the authorities arrive."

"Oh? But I though..." Gordonius started.

"Well if we're going to do some work here we are going to have to clear it with the authorities anyway. Might as well do it with a haul in hand."

"Oh. Yes correct." Better to step into their deception sooner than later.
______________________________________________________________
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Officer Hawkorn though he had seen everything that could happen in this town, he realized he was wrong.

He had heard about bounty hunters, but he had never figured that one would bother to do that out here. And on the off chance that one did show up he hadn't expected anything like this: A trio of hunters, the leader staring at him through that dark T-visored helmet.

"Well... I'm sure we can arrange something despite you running into these people before having approval to work here. It was a good way you dealt with it. It's just... Look can you please take off that helmet?"

"Sorry, no." The armoured bounty hunter said. The tech priest beside him cleared his throat. Hawkorn wondered what kind of contacts he had to be able to get a tech priest to work for him.

"My friend here took some rather severe battle damage in a firefight a few years back and requires the suit for life support. In fact he is roughly 50% machine by now."

Great, just great. He thought.

"All right then. What is your name hunter?"

"Call me..." He hesitated for a moment then answered.

"Murphy."

Interlude 2

"I really would like to know why someone with total power over whatever happens in Tarvin system wants us to sit here and answer a bunch of questions." Mur'Phon said.

"C'mon. He said there were a lot of people who wanted to ask us things. It'll be fun." Miku replied cheerfully.

"Let's just get this over with. I don't like to be treated as an exhibit."

The room was not that large. It had a handful of chairs, tables with light refreshments and the three occupants.

"Well… Where are the questions?"

On that cue a small pile of letters appeared.

Mur'Phon picked one up and looked at it. "It's for you." He handed it over to Gordonius who pulled a pen opener out of his cloak.
______________________________________________________

Dear Fixalticus

Should a lesser brain damage convince Mur'Phon to hand you his weapon, what would you proceed to do with it? Would you study it's fascinating alien techonology and use the newly gained info for the greater good of mankind, would you claim a patent for the technology and earn buckloads of money and fame? Or perhaps you'd just disassemble and reassemble it again for pure fun? Do you have secret plans for the weapon, or any plans for getting your hands on it? Would you share it with me? I'm curious here.

Sincerely yours: The disassembler
_______________________________________________________

Gordon finished reading it.

"Well Disassembler. If I could get my hands on the weapon I would take it apart. Find out how it worked. And then find out how to improve it."

"Right. And if you failed to improve it?" Mur'Phon asked.

"Then I simply find another one and try again until I get it right. It took me quite a few lasguns before I figured out how to upgrade them to hellguns in the field."

"Anyway. I got no plans for grabbing it. And I certainly don't plan on getting myself a tranq gun that works on Tau, knock him out and then grab the gun and run."

"Miku."

"Yes?"

"If he does that please plug a high voltage cable into some of his few remaining organic parts for me."

"Let's just move on to the next question." Gordonius said hurriedly.

"Look. Here's one for you." He grabbed a letter with a rather unusual handwriting style and handed it to Mur'Phon. It was clearly written with several different pens.
________________________________________________________

Dear Mur'Phon: I keep trying to write you but
-but my bossess keep-
-keep eating my pens. How can I-
can I stop them from doing this-
- signed, Grotty mc Grottfield
_________________________________________________________

"Well…. If you go to Tash'Var capital and find the store on the eastern outskirts run by Ki'mar of the earth caste and tell him your problem and that Mur'Phon sent you. Then he'll allow you to buy the really good guns at really good prices. I think you can figure out the next step yourself." Mur'Phon gave a feral grin.

Meanwhile Miku was reading a few of the letters sent to her.

"I'm not sure what to say. They all keep trying to ask me out. It's really sweet, but I don't think I should start dating until I know a bit more about myself."

Mur'Phon and Gordonius exchanged glances. They wanted her to figure out her past about as much as they wanted to be locked up with a lonely Slaaneshi Space Marine for a month.

Mur'Phon picked up another one.
_________________________________________________________


Dear Mur'Phon

Have you ever considered carrying a horseshoe or a four-leaf clover to negate the bad luck haunting you?

Best regards, an Irishman
_________________________________________________________

"Wait. Horse shoes and Four-Leaf clovers negate bad luck?!?" Mur'Phon had no idea what a Clover was, but he figured it was something that could get you drunk considering the sender.

"Well according to ancient legends yes."

"I don't know where to get clovers, but I think it's time to do some aggressive raiding against a few Rough Riders. I will get horseshoes or die trying! Even if I have to rip the horses legs off and run away with those."
_________________________________________________________
Elsewhere completely unrelated a roughrider company suddenly lost control over their beasts as they panicked as if somewhere in the galaxy a being started hunting them with such enormous intensity and obsession that it made chaos look sane by comparison.
__________________________________________________________

Back in the odd room Miku and Gordonius was getting seriously worried about Mur'Phon's insane grin.

"Okaaaay. I think we need to find him another letter before he goes completely off the deep end." Gordonius said.

Miku found a letter addressed to Mur'Phon with indecent haste.

"Here read this please."
___________________________________________________________

Hey are you going to call yourself a Freelance Peace Keeping Agent?

After all it worked for Death's Head.

Actually I'd love for you to encounter Death's Head. Just don't call him a robot or a bounty hunter and he probably would kill you. Maybe.
___________________________________________________________

"Freelance Peace Keeping Agent? What kind of wuss calls himself that? It sounds like an overdose of political correctness. Anyway, who is Death's Head?"

"Death's Head appears in some of the Ad-Mech's most ancient and Holy Scriptures and recordings. Transformers, they speak of giant transforming robots fighting to protect mankind from other evil giant transforming robots." Gordonius requires.

"Sounds like entertainment for children."

"Well there are some heretics within the ad-mech who claims that what it was was made for. They have been artificially kept alive while being tortured for five centuries by now." Gordonius said. The Adeptus Mechanicus was the last bastion of transformers fanboys in the galaxy.

"Right. Next question."
____________________________________________________________

I have a question for Mur'phon, regarding what he thinks of his Empire's system of government, and what he really thinks of the Aun.
____________________________________________________________

"Well… If you have to ask. I think the basic concept is fucking stupid. It sounds nice but so far it seems that it's primarily the Aun's greater good we are working for. All of us serve them. And we force other aliens to serve us in turn. No equality there. Frankly if it hadn't been for what I suspect is pheromone control I'd probably start shooting them on sight. preferably with heavy railguns. Just to be on the safe side.
I like the idea of everyone sane grouping together and then blowing the shit out of everyone not sane, especially the orks, but the idea as it's now is a stupid barely veiled attempt at grabbing galactic power using both the Tau and other species grabbed along the way. Where the hell did they come from anyway? Straight out of the asshole of the galaxy?" Mur'Phon replied looking surprisingly calm

"Anyway, next question."
__________________________________________________________

To Mur'phon- Why did you join the army, did you have a choice? In hindsight would a career in the circus have appealed more?

To Gordonius- I have trouble starting my car in the morning, as a wise and mildly obsessive Tech Priest can you advise me how best to get my car working?

To Miku- Now that evisceration and flaying are off the list of preffered activities, how would you spend your free time if you weren't being chased by assorted monsters?
__________________________________________________________

"Well let's take them in order. No as a member of the fire caste I didn't have any choice. Trained from birth as all other fire caste. Yeah a circus seems like a much better option. Last time I checked genestealers don't try to rape you if you work in Circus. Gordonius your turn."

Gordonius had been out while Mur'Phon answered and inspected the car in question.

"Well after careful examination I have determined a possible way to fix it. Your machine spirit is grumpy and needs to be placated. The Air Freshener you have hanging from the mirror should be moved to the window wiper stick next to the indicator pointing at E to placate the machine spirit."

He paused then added. "Also you need to replace a fireplug."

Miku was thinking for her answer.

"Well I'm not sure. The first thing I want to do is really to discover myself. But after that... I don't really know. Get a cute furry pet maybe. Maybe try to settle down and get a family? There are so many things I would like to do…"

Mur'Phon started to look through his medical supplies for some insulin. He had a very low tolerance for things like this.
_________________________________________________________

Dear Mur'Phon. I recently came down with a huge hangover in all of my heads. I've never had one before, and I'm wondering if you know any good hangover cures. Love, The Hive Mind
_________________________________________________________

"Okay. This is a weird one." Mur'Phon commented.

"Can we get a map over all of observed space in here please?"

A 3D hologram of every observed object in the universe so far popped into existence.
"See this galaxy here." Mur'Phon pointed at the single most far away object he could spot.

"In the centre of this there is the best hangover cure in the universe. You should go there. Infact you should go there now before someone else gets it, hurry, hurry, hurry!"

"Next question please."
____________________________________________________

Dear filthy xenos- scu- I mean, Dear Miku: Where is Commeragh located, and where are the weakpoints in its defenses? Brother Captai- I mean, Just Wondering In Macragge?
____________________________________________________

"I can't remember anything about any Commeragh. I really wish I could help, but, and I'm so sorry, I can't. I'm really sorry." The look on her face was so sad, cute and apologetic that it could make thousands of fans all over the world start crying simultaneously.

"Give me a break, that guy is an asshole and deserves to be hit in full force by a hive fleet set on eating him. Unless it has already happened of course." Mur'Phon said.
___________________________________________________

Dear Mur'Phon, was it you who stole all the powerpacks for my gun right before my squad was attacked by orcs?
___________________________________________________

"Er… no comment." Mur'Phon said looking a bit guilty.

"Ew. What is this white stuff that's wrecked this letter?" Miku said trying to open a letter addressed for her. The return address mentioned someone called Setzer.

"I do not think you want to know right now." Gordonius answered.
___________________________________________________

To unnamed Sgt in chapter...3
Do you think that you got the shaft when the Power That Be killed you off in that scene with Miku?
____________________________________________________

"What?!" Came from both Miku and Mur'Phon at the same time.

"Chapter 3? Scene? What the hell is going on?"

"I've never killed anyone who wasn't a tyranid? Where they sentient after all? I don't want to be a murderer!"

Suddenly in one of the spare chairs a grizzled old sergeant appeared.

"Well I don't think so. It was the kind of death I expected actually. Dying to protect my men. Too bad they all got eaten soon after. And I can't fault this young lady for what another mind in charge of her body did. Yes I am the generic 'Hardass, but deep down really cares about my men and is a man of honour' sergeant."

He just disappeared after saying that.

"We're in a story. We are fucking characters in a story written by some sadistic hack who likes to see people suffer. We should hunt him down and give him some of what people have suffered so far in his amateurish writing!"

"Before you completely explode maybe we should take a look on the last letter."

"Well in my non-existence I don't have much else to do. Do I?"
_______________________________________________________

Dear Mur'phon: I got the gun you suggested, but things didn't work out. Know where I can find a good proctologist?
P.S. Why can't you make rounded guns? Why do they have to be square?
_______________________________________________________

That took all the aggression out of Mur'Phon for a moment as the question hit him like an Battleship on all full ahead ramming spike first.

"Well… You see… No comment." He managed to stutter out.

There was a few minutes of awkward silence.

"Hey who are these guys with sunglasses and dark suits? And what are those pen things they are holding up?" Miku asked.

There was a flash of light just before the characters disappeared and re-entered the story.

Chapter 8: Nights and firefights.

The town didn't have anything rating as a full hotel. It did have something that qualified as an inn though, and thanks to the catch of the three incompetent crooks the team had money to stay there for the night.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Mur'Phon said.

"Aw come on. Sleeping in a bed beats the ground." Miku said. It was her idea.

"I will admit she has a point. We can more than afford it."

"I have conceded haven't I? It just seems a bit pointless."

"Anyway… What's the worst that could happen?" Miku asked.

Mur'Phon spun around, even through the helmet radiating pure terror. "You did not just say that!!!"
_______________________________________________________

The guide has this to say on 'What is the worst that could happen?':

"It may seem a bit odd that a simple sentence gets an entry, but this one is a special case. It is the single sentence that should never ever be uttered no matter the circumstances. The mere act of saying it seems to trigger disasters. Last time I heard it said was when fighting Orks in the desert. Within 24 hours we were hit with by a sandstorm that none of our forecasts had seen, we lost over half our jetpack equipped units before we could get protection against it in place, then the main Ork force blundered into us...

At any rate if you have the misfortune of being near a fellow soldier who says this. I recommend you just shoot him and claim accidental weapons discharge, if he happens to have higher rank than you I recommend going AWOL for a few days until the disaster has blown over.

And if you are so unfortunate to blurt it out without thinking. Well... It was nice knowing you."
______________________________________________________

They entered the inn with Mur'Phon highly alert for anything that could become a threat.

"I'm sorry." Miku said. She knew it was her fault that Mur'Phon was so paranoid right now.

Mur'Phon bit back a retort that she would apologize for the sky being green (It was on Tarvin B) if someone complained about it.

The inn wasn't really that well kept. It was obvious the owner was cutting costs everywhere he could. Which suited Mur'Phon fine as it meant it was less likely employees of it would disturb him in his room.

The visitors looked like something out of a bad fantasy novel. The only thing that was really missing was some drunken dwarfs and a few cute short people lugging magic rings that had a tendency to corrupt files in the brain. Otherwise it was all there.

Miku took a step towards a free table.

"No." Mur'phon said.

"What harm can socializing a little do?"

"Get us all shot for one thing if we're lucky."

"C'mon. Please." There was the baby seal look again. Mur'Phon felt like he was refusing a small child another helping of desert.

"I said no. We go to our room. Maybe come down later to buy some food to bring to the room but that's it."

She gave an indignant noise, but turned around.

"Spoilsport."

"I prefer the word sensible."

In the bar two people nodded to each other. That had to be the target.
________________________________________________________

The room was filthy, cold and small, but it was still better than the outdoors Mur'Phon had to reluctantly admit as he put the trigger mechanism of the carbine down on the blanket. Field maintenance was important and it was the first time he had in quite some time to do it.

Miku was sitting in a corner looking decidedly bored and also annoyed at the same time. Annoyed like a kid who wanted out to play.

Gordonius was tinkering on some weird device, or atleast he seemed to. Mur'Phon had no doubt that the moment he turned back to the field maintenance the device turned out to be a camera and he started going paparazzi on the carbine. It was better to just tolerate that than try and stop him and make him do something nasty like hitting him with a tranq, grabbing the gun and running.

Somehow thinking about that gave him an odd urge to go out and kill every author he could find. Well who could explain why the mind connected things like it did?

He reached for a ration.

"Shouldn't you save your rations for later?" Miku said, both voice and expression making it plainly clear what she wanted.

"You will do anything to get an excuse to go down there won't you?"

"Uh huh." She nodded. Had there been any craftworld eldar present they would be horrified at how direct she was. She didn't even try to use the simplest riddles!

Mur'Phon sighed. Somehow he didn't think she'd stop complaining until she got her will.

"All right. Take some money and get something to eat. But get back up here pronto."

"Yes sir!" She grinned as she threw a mock salute, turned around and left.

"I just did something really stupid didn't I."

"The Omnissiah most probably agrees with you."

"Then why didn't you stop me?"

"Mostly because I am of the branch that believes that the Omnissiah also loves good entertainment."

"So we should be expected to start shooting in a few minutes."

"Most likely."
_________________________________________________________

Outside it was starting to get cold.

"How long until they go to sleep?"

"I heard Tau need more sleep than humans. Shouldn't be long now. Probably just after they eat."

"I hate chilly nights."

"Oh it could have been worse."

"Yeah it could have been..."

He was cut off by a thundercrack as a literal hammer of water fell down on them as it started raining, well pouring
____________________________________________________________

Miku went down the stairs just as it started raining. From the sounds of it really bad too. She was so glad she wasn't outside right now.

"Hey I'd like three... Grox steaks please." She said looking at the menu. Then she turned to the person next to her.

"Hi. My name's Miku."

She chatted happily with everyone around her waiting for the food, though in a corner of the room more sinister people were watching.

"Hey boss. That has to be the finest piece of ass I've seen all month."

The middle aged man in the middle of the group of four eating his dinner raised his eyes and looked fairly disinterested as he seemed to size Miku up from his table.

"Someone with those looks don't come around often. And I could use some entertainment tonight. Go over and hire her."

"Uh... I don't think she is a..."

"Everyone has their price. I can afford some expensive fun tonight."

"Yes boss." The henchman got up and walked over to Miku.

"Exuse me miss."

Miku turned around on her seat and looked down on the short somewhat chubby balding man.

"Yes?"

"My boss will make it worth your while if you come by his room later tonight to entertain."

"Oh... But I don't have any skills in entertainment. Atleast I don't think so. I'm suffering from amnesia."

"No, no. I mean that he would find the company of someone like you quite... Pleasurable."

Miku was a bit confused.

"Uh. I'm not sure I get what you mean. I don't think I'm that fun to be around."

The henchman resisted the urge sigh at how clueless she was.

"If you want me to spell it out he wants to do the dirty."

"Uh... The dirty? Just what does that mean?"

"You know, the horizontal mambo."

"Still don't get it."

"He wants to do you."

"Never heard that term before, that I can remember I mean."

"Hammer in the nail."

"So it involves carpeting?"

By now several people around them were fighting against the urge to giggle.

"No. It doesn't involve carpeting. Now listen you dumb broad..."

"Hey! Drop the insults, do I go around calling you baldy?"

That was it. The one insult he absolutely hated.

"Damn it you stupid whore!! You want me to spell it out for you?! He wants to bend you over and fuck you silly for cash!!" He yelled.

The entire room was silent. At the mobster table the boss buried his face in his hands.

"Whatever Baldy" Miku said as got up taking the Grox steaks that had been cooling for several minutes now with her. Her mood was thoroughly ruined by this short fellow. Several of the people around her gave baldy nasty looks as they had found her very pleasant company.

As she walked up the stars she stopped to consider, what did she know about sex anyway? It was a really a skill so she should be able to remember some of it. She stopped. Concentrated and closed her eyes for a second.

They flew open again. Her blushing face was so red it could probably be seen from orbit.

"Oh dear..." She said weakly.
______________________________________________________________

"Boss I..."

"Shut up. You and that broad made me lose face. And we can't have that can we? If I lose face, I lose respect. If I lose respect I get angry. Marty, take him outside for a quick stop and then come back in. We will teach that broad some respect." He was the most feared man in the town and wasn't about to let anyone make him look stupid.

Baldy froze up as he recognized the code for kill and didn't say a word as he was practically dragged out.
______________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon raised his head from where he sat on his bed in the darkened room.

"Finally, I was beginning to worry." He knocked at the side of his helmet.

"There's gotta be something wrong with the infrared. It says your face is several degrees hotter than the rest of you."

"Er... Change of subjects please." She said in a rather weak voice as she put the food on the table.

"Right." He didn't understand why she was so uncomfortable. He would have to look up human characteristics again.

"Hm... Kinda cold. Humans let it cool before they serve it?"

"Well... Yes" Miku lied.

"Humans have weird habits. It's much better when it's hot."

"It's a cheap place after all right?" She said hoping he didn't catch on.

"That. Or you just sat down there having fun while our food cooled. Either way food is food."

"Nothing bad has happened yet right?"

"Trust me it will."

That was when she noted that the window was boobytrapped

"Do you ever consider that maybe you are too paranoid?" She asked wondering where the hell he had managed to get his hands on those things as they didn't look like Tau issue.

"Paranoia is a survival trait. Now step away from the door please. I got some salvaged directional anti-personal mines that are just itching to blow people up."

"Just remember to remove them before the cleaning maid arrives." Gordonius commented

"If they can't be arsed to invest in armour for their personnel it's not my fault. And besides it will give some more to do for her colleagues."
___________________________________________________
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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"Is he asleep yet."

"Yeah. He did something to the door then went to his bed. The rest of the group are getting into the beds too."

"Can we kill him now?"

"We should wait a bit until we are sure he is asleep."

"C'mon. Please?"

"Oh all right." They started climbing up to the window and got ready to kick it in.
__________________________________________________________

"They should be asleep now. Go in. Take care of anyone else in the room and bring her to me. After I am done with her you can have your fun." The two goons approached the door and got ready to bust in violently.
__________________________________________________________

There were two near simultaneous explosions and Mur'Phon exploded out of bed weapon at the ready.

The door was the primary threat. He ran over and tossed a photon grenade out of the shredded wooden plate.

Down the corner the criminal got stunned by the grenade as Mur'Phon did a quick sweep in infrared ascertaining no more foes there and checked the window. There were two oddly dressed brutally mauled corpses on the ground.

He walked over to the sole survivor.

"So what did you want?" He asked casually. There was quite a bit of screaming and people running around, but Mur'Phon was getting used to it by now so he wasn't bothered.

"Y... You know who I am?" The man managed to compose himself after the first try.

"No. Should I? Now what did you want."

"I have powerful friends. You won't get away with this."

"Right. And they'll be of help to you how if I just decide to blow your head off?" Mur'Phon frankly wasn't impressed at what this one man could POSSIBLY use against him.

"I can afford to make it worth your while. I wasn't here after you. I was just trying to pay that girl back for insulting me."

"Ah so you are a criminal. Good. You are aware that I'm a bounty hunter right?"

Gordonius and Miku stepped out from the room seeing him holding him at gunpoint

"There aren't any bounties on me!" He hoped he could pay himself out of it.

"Actually there is. Just that nobody was willing to take it because the higher ups in your chain are considered too dangerous."

"Dead or alive?"

"Both, but less if he's dead."

"Right."

"I will remember this. I will get revenge!" He said a bit more bravado when he was sure he wouldn't be killed.

"I highly doubt that." Said Mur'Phon and fired. The 'dead' bounty was a lot easier to claim.

"Was that really necessary?" Miku asked as usual horrified in how casually Mur'Phon was willing to kill.

"Well, it saves us the trouble of having to run into him time and time again." Mur'Phon reasoned.

Interlude 3: A christmas story.

It was the night before the night before Christmas, there was nary a sound.

Well except the ear splitting scream as Santa's helpers found the note in his room that is.

"Santa's been kidnapped!"
_______________________________________________________

There was only one choice really. This close to Christmas they couldn't find a qualified replacement in time. And if they revealed it to the public there would be panic and the inquisition would get involved and there were a lot of shady dealings in Santa's work shop by imperial standards. He did deliver to some xenos too after all. So they needed external help.

They asked for some specialists from the Tau. The Tau had been pissed ever since he stopped giving them coal (Which had seriously helped them keep their heating bills down) and started giving them useless toys instead so they decided to send the bottom of the barrel. A Shas'la with fairly low training scores going by the name of Mur'Phon who seemed to be constantly at ground zero for disasters.

Mur'Phon was reading the letter.

"Giv us da biggest shootaz in da oo-nee-verz or Santa getz it." It said.

"As you can see it seems the Orks kidnapped Santa."

"I don't buy it. The sentence is fairly coherent even if it's in their typical language." Mur'Phon was arguing with one of the elves.

"Right who else would write like that?"

"Well there's a lot of good Ork translators on the 'net. Maybe they wanted to throw us off?"

"Why?"

"Isn't it obvious? This close to christmas there is little chance you could manage to pay any ransom in time to matter. So I guess they rather want him out of the way so christmas gets ruined."

"That's... Horrible. How did you hit on that logic?"

"That's easy. All these stupid christmas stories have the same theme. Anyway. Who will I be liaising with while I'm here? You?"

"No I'm a busy, busy man. We've got someone who is a lot more fan friendly to do that job."

She was tall and fair skinned with dark hair with pointy ears barely peeking out from it. She was wearing a red christmas hat and had a low cut red top with white furry edges that stopped slightly above the navel and a very short skirt with the same style. All over the world fanboys started drooling (Both of them).

"Oh... Kay. I see we're sinking to the level of gratuitous fan service" Mur'Phon said throwing ugly glances towards the fourth wall.

"Hey it's not my fault it was the only clothes they had in my size. Besides they are comfy." Miku said.

"We get her because the eldar felt she was an embarrassment what with her not talking in riddles and such. And since eldar are really elves she might as well get a job here."

"Right, c'mon girl we're taking a look around."

"Aren't you gonna do forensics or anything?"

"I may be a bounty hunter on the side, but my skills are pretty much exclusively kicking ass and causing mayhem. And if you'll be surprised at how many problems properly applied mayhem can solve."
_____________________________________________________

The vehicle hangar was packed with all sorts of well?. Weird vehicles.

There was the famous sled of course, with its 8 Reindeer custodes equipped with power antlers. The sled itself carried enough ordnance to worry a full strength hive fleet. After all it was a dangerous galaxy. Then there were the assorted christmas colored vehicles with a heavy tilt towards Imperium vehicles including a massive thunderhawk with christmas bells on the side as well as full combat loadout.

Who was keeping this fleet of small craft running? Well that was easy. The Ex-Skitarii trooper turned tech priest in charge of the hangar was more than up to doing that. Though other races rarely visited this place any more as he had a tendency to take their equipment apart when they weren't looking and when he put it together again... Well so far the success rate for reassembling on first try was kinda... slightly less than optimal.

"So there have been no vehicles leaving or teleports since last week?"

"Yes. We usually shut them down about then precisely because of those four times the Genestealer Cult Grinches decided to do a last minute strike on us. We lost many jolly elves those days." He was silent for a moment in remembrance of the cookies they would never make again (Really tasty cookies) then turned cheerful again.
"Say I've never had a look on Tau weaponry. Can I borrow your gun?" The tech Priest Gordonius asked.

"How about I shove a grenade up your butt?"

"Where's your sense of christmas cheer?"

"Sold it on eBay."

"See. Materialism is ruining christmas."
_________________________________________________________

There were three of them heading down to the bar.

"Why are we heading to the bar? Hoping to talk to some contacts?" Miku asked.

"Because I'm thirsty and I'm tired of eggnog. And a more important question is why is the techpriest following us?"

"I figured I could be off help." Gordonius answered.

"And of course I may happen to leave my carbine unattended for a moment and that in no way factor into your thinking does it."

"Well?"

"That was a rhetoric question."

They entered the bar. Mur'Phon wasn't a heavy drinker, but this case was giving him a headache and he needed something to drink.

The bar was filled with depressed christmas elves. There had been a mishap in genetics department and a horrible evil creature (That looked suspiciously like a half sized teletubbie) had rampaged through it for almost half an hour until it was subdued. The casualties had been heavy and a lot of elves had lost their loved ones.

Which meant the human sized guy in black cloak wasn't very hard to miss among all the midgets.

"I think I'll skip the drink. I got a hunch that the guy over there knows something about the case."

"Oh? What makes you think that?" Miku asked.

"This is a one-off. Meaning it's got to be resolved pretty soon and since he got emphasis he's either the basis for a joke or plot important or both."
"Won't breaking the fourth wall piss of our fans?"

"We're hoping your getup will distract them from it."

A guy walked up to Miku and tried to get something over her head. It was a short, tubby and balding guy. The kind that most likely was dead in main storyline.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get a mistletoe branch over your head. Why do you have to be so damn tall? Stay there I'll get a ladder."

Miku turned to Gordonius.

"I try to be a nice girl, but that guy gives me the urge to wait until he gets the ladder. Then kick it over as he's climbing up."

"Don't worry. That's a perfectly normal reaction to that guy."
___________________________________________________

Mur'Phon approached the cloaked stranger.

"Good evening stranger. How's business."

The stranger didn't turn around.

"Ah as good as can be expected."

"Oh. What is hindering it?"

"Well you know stuff."

"Stuff like Santanapping?" Mur'Phon was in a hurry (He hadn't gotten around to do his Christmas shopping yet) and didn't feel dancing around.

The stranger flinched visibly.

"How?" He asked simply.

"I read the script." Mur'Phon bluffed, he was never allowed to see it, but neither was anyone else so this guy couldn't know this. The stranger seemed to panic. Mur'Phon grinned. He had a suspect

The story would have ended then and there if not for the fact that baldy was kinda stupid.

There was a loud crash as his ladder was kicked over. Mur'Phon instinctively turned towards the noise and the stranger bolted.

Mur'Phon swore gratuitously and yelled for his comrades to follow him.

The obligatory chase scene was on.
________________________________________________________

The streets of polar city were packed with people being thrown about like bowling pins as the cloaked man ran through then. They got up and managed to look a bit confused before being thrown aside again as a Tau followed closely by a hot eldar and a techpriest ran past.

The man they were chasing was surprisingly fit for his build. They were gaining though.

"He's heading for the archive!"

The great archive, listing who was naughty or nice, and all files were stored in paper copies as well as electronic. They used some severe dimensional tampering to fit it all, and elves were running around updating the paper files with telescopic ladders allowing them to access all of them.

The stranger tore down several ladders sending screaming elves flying as he tried to slow his pursuers.

Mur'Phon raised his weapon for a snapshot.

"No don't..." Gordonius began just as he fired. And ignited the thick layers of dust the ladders being thrown down had knocked up. The flash fire was safely in front of them, but it burned to death sixteen more elves screaming horribly and incinerated the entire section for Necromunda.

"Er... I hope that was insured" Mur'Phon said before he started running again.

The fire spread as they followed him through the door into the main workshop. Elves were still busy the last few days trying to get the last batch of Christmas gifts ready. They had lost a lot of time when they had tried to strike for better working conditions earlier the year, but quick use of Space Marines from the Santa's Samaritans chapter had squashed it. The survivors now had four times the workload and there had been an unusually high number of elves getting dragged into heavy machinery screaming as they were torn apart. The management had been trying to improve morale and put a positive spin on it by saying they were screaming as it was as fun as a really extreme rollercoaster, not because they were slowly and painfully killed by remorseless machines.

The fact that a significant number of them bought this explanation seemed to confirm the theory that there was quite a lot of inbreeding going on among them.
At any rate the stranger barreled through them sending them flying into eachother, the machines and into the slippery pools of blood from those sucked into the machines falling and breaking their tiny necks. The Polar city hadn't been the same since Walmart started acting as advisor to Santa on matters of working conditiion.

The heroes followed at a run.

"He's heading for the hangar!" Miku said.

"If he gets into Santa's sled we'll never catch him!" Gordonius replied

"Don't worry. I prepared ahead for that." Said Mur'Phon and slowed down to save his breath, but still appear to be pursuing.

"What?"

"I knew the author would try to set up a big chase with those vehicles and rigged the two that were described with anti-personel mines designed to wound."

"What if someone else tried to use them?" Miku said a bit worried

"I had multiple layers so it'd take quite a few Christmas elves to clear them." Mur'Phon answered completely missing the point.

The stranger entered the hangar. And a few seconds later there was a loud boom.

At a calm walk Mur'Phon entered the hangar seeing the stranger lying in a pool of his own blood his right arm completely ripped off.

"So... Time to resolve this plot, the man who kidnapped Santa was..." He reached out and ripped the mask off.

"Santa!!!" The three of them said in unison.

"And I would have gotten away with it too if it, wasn't for you meddling xenos and that tech priest." The not-so-jolly-right-now fat bearded man said grimacing in pain for his lost arm.

"But why?" Miku.

"Because Christmas was getting too much for me! When I had to expand to cover the entire galaxy it just got too much. I never have a spare moment anymore. Thanks to time meddling I always got enough time to get the gifts out, but it takes over 40.000 years subjectively. And the rest of the year I have to spend all my time preparing for that. I can't take it anymore and I wanted to ruin it to finally have some spare time!"

"Couldn't you just use that time dilation to take a few decades vacation on christmas eve?" Miku asked.

Santa looked at her for a moment.

"Doh!"
_________________________________________________________
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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And so christmas was saved. Santa set out the day after when he had finished getting his new bionic arm fitted and they were done sending christmas elves at his sled to clear out the mines Mur'Phon had put there. Santa himself spent a lot of time in the best tourist spots in the galaxy during this christmas eve. For the heroes of Christmas he got something special for each of them.

For Gordonius he got a crate of xenos weaponry that he could tinker with to his hearts delight.

For Miku he went to great lengths to acquire a pet: A young treekitten who bonded with her immediately.

And for Mur'Phon For his penchant for disaster he gave several preserved four leaf clovers, a couple of horse shoes and a masterfully made hare-paw to improve his luck.

A happy ending for all (Except those Christmas elves who got caught in the crossfire, but they were expendable anyway).

Merry Christmas and Happy new year.

Except for those bastards from the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus that is.


The end.

Chapter 9:

Miku was angry. This wasn't exactly an earth shattering thing, when she was angry she was about as scary a teletubbie, well that was a bad example as those can be really scary at times. As scary as a sleepy kitten might be more appropriate, if you were able to forget that she could slice you apart and have your meat deboned and sorted out the most tender pieces before you hit the ground if she wanted to.

That had been enough to scare Mur'Phon as little as a day ago, but currently it was beginning to get on his nerves.

"Could you quit glaring at me? You aren't having much effect." It was the kind of glare get paint of the wall out of pity for her trying so hard yet failing so miserably. Frankly it was closer to puppy eyes than the terrifying glare she was trying for.

"You didn't have to kill him."

"I told you. He was the kind that bear grudges, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to go after you. And it's not very convenient to have to dodge one of his revenge attempts every week or so."

"Not convenient? Not convenient!? You killed a man because it wasn't convenient to let him live?! What kind of a monster are you?!" Somewhere the gods of irony were laughing their asses off at the sheer irony of a Dark Eldar lecturing anyone else on being monsters.

"The kind that wants to survive to get home." Mur'Phon said simply.

"Before the blood starts flooding… Where are we heading next?" Gordonius's survival instinct appeared to be on vacation for the moment.

"The current plan is to take a bit of a dog leg towards the capital. I want to get some more distance from the quarantine zone to avoid the patrols there." And of course unstated to avoid tempting fate by walking too close given how fate loved to one-up them.

"Sensible idea, except that of course that will probably mean the Orks will start a miniature waagh to reach us."

Mur'Phon gave him an 'okaaaay' look.
_______________________________________________________

"They are too many! We're being overrun!" The PDF patrol com officer screamed as the ork beat the Lieutenant to death using the Lt's own ripped off leg.
_______________________________________________________

"So anyway. I was planning to lay the route by this small village here, then swing around behind that chain of mountains and skirt the edges of those marshes passing through this forest here."

"None of which are too thoroughly mapped and are deeply shrouded in myths and local supersitions. Are you sure you have though this through?" Gordonius pressed. Miku just glared sullenly at silently.

"Wait, I didn't know that. Perhaps we should consider cutting east here instead."

"There's talk of a secret military base in that area."

"Okay. North at this point then." Mur'Phon was getting worried now.

"Rumors of a monstrous beast that eats anything that moves."

"Southeast here?"

"Leads straight to the most violent town on this entire hemisphere."

"Is there ANY route which doesn't lead straight into potential horrible death?"

"Well you could go the opposite way and cross the entire planet in that direction."

Mur'Phon was sorely tempted right then, unfortunately for him fate (in the person of a righteous dead dude) had other plans for him.

"Excuse me... Are you a servant of the Machine God?" A man wearing significantly better clothes than most of the other people on the street asked Gordonius.

"Well... Yes. How can the Omnissiah aid you?"

"I'm a courier and my air car broke down. And the local tech priest appears to have well... Gotten himself killed because someone fell on him from the second floor of an inn."

Miku looked challengingly at Mur'Phon, in a look that made it clear that she considered it beyond a shadow of a doubt his fault, but the stranger didn't notice.

"So you want me to fix the aircar, very well, but in return we require transport."

"Well it will be tight, but I think we can fit you in."

"Lead the way."
_______________________________________________________________

"The Orks have broken through here, here and here. Either by luck or design they struck at the exact moment we had pulled back a few garrisons for leave and just before we could send reinforcement troops." The PDF colonel reported

"How the hell did they do that?" The advisor said. "Orks are stupid. They can't possibly have been watching our troop dispositions."

"Not all Orks are that dumb dumb, though it is peculiar. The Orks individually actually aren't that concerned with surviving. They want to fight and that's it. That they elected to attack when we were at the weakest doesn't make any sense at all." The colonel pointed out.

"Oh the reason for that is obvious. They were manipulated into it." That was the closest thing to an useful piece of information the inquisitor had said since he took over command of the government.

"By who?" The Colonel asked, wishing that the general hadn't felt it too pressing to coordinate their defense against the breakout and sent him to deal with the politicians in his place.

"You don't need to know that." The inquisitor said with the rude dismissal that was becoming his trademark. And the knowing smirk which every person in the room had to fight down the urge to knock off his face.

The colonel resisted the urge to go and bang his head into a wall. He then fought down the urge to grab the inquisitor and yell into his face that he was being an overdramatic idiot and unless he could atleast drop his cryptic hints in a way he could use to fight this pocket war here he could shut the fuck up and go and piss of the space marines or something. He then finally fought down the urge to scream.

"What you do need to know is that it's imperative that we don't overcommit on this. The whole thing is a distraction to draw away troops."

"So we should just leave our people in their path to die?" He said with his voice cold.

"Oh if it appears it'll threaten any more than the small piss-ant villages currently in their path you can nuke the orks from orbit. That should slow them down a bit." The inquisitor replied casually apparently not caring about those that died in that, not to mention the side-effects on the environment (which was sure to grab their food production from behind while the fallout started punching it in the gut) from that kind of action.

Of course, had he known what was going on he'd gladly level the entire surface of the planet and if that was it thought he had gotten off easy.

And had the inquisitor known what was going on (as opposed to pretending) he'd just as soon hijack Abaddons planetkiller (or hell even rent it if that was the only thing that worked) and blow it up. Hell he'd dig up several blackstone fortresses from somewhere and blow up the entire system to be on the safe side afterwards.
___________________________________________________________________

"You sure this is an aircar?" Mur'Phon asked a bit too used to reliable well maintained Tau technology.

"I'm not too sure myself. Gordonius admitted. He was at least used to the machinery he worked with having less of the holy substance duct tape covering them.

"What a piece of junk!" Miku exclaimed not accustomed to seeing anything that looked like it hung together with chewed bubble gum.

"She may not look like much, but she got it where it counts." The Courier said grinning.

"I take it you've installed a caf dispenser then" Mur'Phon said dryly while taking a closer look. Rusted, dented, looked more like taped back on than actually repaired for the most part. On the front end the name "Century Hawk" was proudly written in flaming lettering.

"Yes. Amongst other things it does have a state of the art caf dispenser, can handle caf, decaf and expresso. Oh and also Tanna Tea, but you really do not want to drink that." The courier was apparently immune to sarcasm.

"So is there any hope for fixing this thing?" Mur'Phon asked Gordonius.

"Well…. I think if we repolarize the repulsor-flux-capacitors, Defilibrate the ascartix coil and respectfully apply a moderate amount of kinetic energy to the port side of the engine it should work for a while."

"Uh… What?" Miku asked.

"Magnetize the hover field, quick charge the engine and then give it a good solid kick" Gordonius translated.

"You know. I'd ask if it would be safe, but I really don't think I want to know the answer." Mur'Phon commented.

"I'll get right at it."

____________________________________________________________

The Guide has this to say about Orks.

"Orks appear to be the inspiration for the mythical human creature "Manchester hooligan". From what I've gleamed from legends they appear to be exactly the same except Orks are more civilized. Orks are dedicated completely to fighting, it's their hobby, their life. Until I realized this I used to think it was pent up sexual frustration from being genderless and hence being completely unable to get laid. As it is the Orks are the happiest species in known space. And as you may know motivated soldiers are superior soldiers (Hence my "No cracking down on the porn black market" rule for our own troops).

The Orks are big, mean and firmly convinced that the rules of the universe doesn't apply to them, and oddly enough for the most part they don't. They seem to literally be able to affect the universe with raw belief. Thankfully they are mostly too stupid to make full use of it, there are in normal circumstances just three things to remember: If it's red it's faster than it should be, if it's green it's tougher than it should be and if it shoots it's got less a tendency to explode on it's own that it should have

Orks aren't smart, but they got their own brand of cunning, however since the majority is outright idiots that makes them hard to predict. It's like if we put the Water caste in charge of 90% of our army just to fool the enemy into a sense of complacency before we strike with our actual units.

Hm…. Wonder if I could get away with forming units consisting solely of water caste personnel with guns for that same purpose? It's not like we have a shortage of them. Moving on...

Orks appear to consider aiming cowardly and hence don't use it. Therefore if they shoot at you it's safer to be the target than elsewhere. The only problem is those big nasty axe-things of theirs. They tend to smart a bit if they manage to hit you. The other problem is that orks also really like to see firewarriors go squish when punched hard enough hence tend to close. They are also remarkably fast for being such bulky creatures.

Therefore: If attacked for the love of the greater good fire, fire some more, keep firing, and finally just blast away. Running is pretty much pointless unless command was obliging enough to leave a fast vehicle on hand to hijack like a piranha. If they did, well if you have survived this far I doubt you need any encouragement from me.

Oh, and Orks appear to reproduce from body odor, no I don't understand it either, just burn them when dead to ensure their stink don't become billions of more orks. If you can't burn them make sure to be far away from that place from then on starting within a few weeks at most.

Finally: The Orks are about the only other people with a sense of humor I've found in the entire galaxy. This do mean that fighting them can if you put some effort to it be more entertaining than most enemies, anything to make life at the front lines a little more bearable after all. Just remember not to be the last one to start running in a retreat.
_______________________________________________________________

The Century Hawk shuddered and creaked.

"The machine spirit is in a joking mood." Gordonius stated reassuringly.

"That or it's cranky again huh?" Mur'Phon said pointedly still remembering the research station.

"That is a possibility yes." He conceded.

"Idon'twanna'dieI'don'twannadie…" Miku said incoherently rocking slightly back and forth hugging herself in her seat trying to pretend she was somewhere else.

Of course the pilot was not noticing any of this whistling happily as he flew what appeared dangerously low to the trio and occasionally acted a bit like a guide pointing out interesting things along the way.

Mur'Phon wondered again why the hell he was here. Apart from the whole surviving thing that is. Well with a little luck he'd be off this rock within a week.

He didn't know that while Murphy's law usually ignored your hidden thoughts in this case it would make an exception.

"And to the left here we have…. Hey what are all those green guys?"
Mur'phon snapped to full attention

"Big, muscled, green and with horrible teeth?"

"Yeah pretty much."

In response he merely flicked off the safety on his carbine.

"Orks."

"Orks!" He screamed and dived wildly to get out of the line of fire.

"No whatever you do! Don't dodge!" He yelled too late as a freak shoota round blew his head off making it land in Miku's lap.

Reflexes took over. Before Miku had even started screaming he was shoving the headless corpse out of the way to take the controls.

"Can you fly this marginally venerable creation of the omnissiah?"

"No, but somebody gotta try."

In the background Miku was still screaming.

The car was in a hard dive, he pulled up hard. And felt something snap and controls suddenly got really clumsy.

"Ah shit. Brace for impact."

Miku stopped screaming for a moment, inhaled, then started screaming again.

He got out of the way of a particularly tall and thick tree barely, then pulled towards what looked like a clearing.

Miku was still screaming.

He pulled up and hit everything that might remotely be a brake. And then they hit, they plowed into the ground leaving a long open black wound in the forest behind them. The corpse of the pilot was sent flying forward smacking into a big tree with a meaty thud.

Miku finally stopped screaming.

"We're alive?"

"Either that or I'm in hell. Currently I'd give it fifty-fifty odds." Mur'Phon said adrenaline draining from his system

More dakka sounds echoed through the forest.

"We really should get a move on."

"Yeah, but to where?"

"There's that village a few klicks in that direction. As good a place as any to go."

They ran., but it sounded like orks were on their trail and gaining fast.

Mur'Phon seemed to lag a bit behind. Miku slowed down to take a look that he wasn't left behind, she looked behind her and... Nothing...

"Stop! We've lost Mur'phon!" She grabbed Gordonius and forced him to stop.

"What are you doing? We can get away while they are busy killing him in horrible ways."

"We are not leaving anyone behind!" She countered angrily.

"Well.."

"Shut up! Is there any trace of decency in either of you? Am I the only good person on this entire planet?!"

"You really should…."

"Be more like you two? Then I'd have killed you both already because I could. We can't go around acting like…."

"Orks are gaining." He finally said quickly.

"Oh." She stopped and turned. A small ork squad was right there howling in triumph at catching their kill.

That's when the blue muzzle flare from the bush lashed out burning down a few and a launched grenade from the same position took most of the rest. A single survivor hesitated for a moment weather to run or stand, a bit too long as a single shot casually dispatched him too in a gory manner sending red vapor over several bushes.

"Hah! Flawless Kayon!" Mur'Phon said emerging from his ambush place.

"You guys did great as bait."

"Bait? But…"

"How did you get the idea to start yelling? It was brilliant. They didn't even look in my direction while going after you." He continued not aware that most humans didn't know that in Kayon it was a great honor to be the lure.

"AAAAARGH! You two are driving me crazy!" Miku yelled holding her head.

"Well we…."

"Next one to make my migraine worse I will…. Well…. Something really, really mean! Like refuse to talk to them for a week!"

"Sounds like a pretty good deal to me." Gordonius muttered under his breath.
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

eskimoene har 23 ord for snø, Immortal har 24

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Har begynt å lese denne, og liker den ganske godt - så takk for at du deler disse fanfiction tekstene med oss Petter. Du må gjerne poste flere hvis du finner noen gode.

Det er enkelte småfeil her dog:
Quote:
 
The first shells didn't actually penetrate his armour, they blew him clean off his feet and sent him barrelling through the air, the follow up shells hit the now weakened armour and shattered it in mid air and penetrated. Interestingly enough there wasn't much mess, the armour mostly contained it and only a small red fountain from the hole just as the shell detonated was visible. The top rating cadet in last years graduation class of firewarriors got wiped from the universe by a hail of bolter shells.


Tau har f.eks ikke rødt, men blått blod.

Rune
Nothing to prove
Just a hellish rock'n roll freak
You call your metal black
It's just plastic lame and weak
- Darkthrone, Too Old, Too Cold -

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Shas'O Reinås
Oct 28 2007, 02:58 PM
Har begynt å lese denne, og liker den ganske godt - så takk for at du deler disse fanfiction tekstene med oss Petter. Du må gjerne poste flere hvis du finner noen gode.

Tau har f.eks ikke rødt, men blått blod.

Bare hyggelig Rune :)


Har lagt merke til sånne småfeil innimellom jeg også, men føler ikke det gjør så mye egentlig.
Men du visste vel at grunnen til at de har blåaktig blod er at det er kobber, isteden for jern, som frakter oksygen i blodet deres? Og at det derfor, visstnok, lukter uggent? :o
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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meir humor!

Chapter 10

She meditated again. It seemed the situation was still salvageable, her subordinates had been acceptably successful in rousing the Orks to action and with them on the move the odds were in her favor again. They wouldn't have to commit any forces to die in the onslaught that was about to swallow up this world. She took another overview with her visions, the only possible lynchpin was that small village there. If it held the Orks would falter too fast to do what they must, but as it stood there was just about zero chance of survival. Still she was cautious.

That was funny… The air car wreck hadn't been there in her earlier versions of this vision. She got a feeling of dread. She knew what she would find farther down that path away from it, her vision implied it was of no consequence yet she deep down knew what she would find.

She saw the trio moving rapidly away from the crash towards the village. She recognized them. She screamed in frustration.

A small part of her protested that there was virtually no chance three people could possibly change the outcome, but somehow she knew that what her visions told her was false. She just couldn't see it yet. In this she was even blinder than those accursed mon-keigh.

What the hell had she done to offend the old gods so much?!

She swore that if she came out of this alive she'd wipe out that blue skinned mon-keigh species.
_____________________________________________________________

They ran. If it had been a marathon they would have collapsed under the weight of all the gold medals by now, but running away from hordes of ravenous aliens was almost normal for them by now.

Only this time it seemed they couldn't get away, the forces behind them was slowly gaining. Already an advanced party had started shooting, their fire landing all around the trio as they ran harder.

"That way!" Mur'Phon yelled as he turned towards a village visible through the foliage thinking they would have a better chance against the advance party in there.

Entering the main street Mur'Phon stopped and hauled the other two into an alley to not have any distracting bait around while he lured them in for the kill.

Mur'Phon pulled out his last two anti-personnel mine and looked at them with regret.

"So long. Your kind has served me well." He said as he placed them then at the walls.

"C'mon!" He dropped into cover behind some trash cans further in and got ready priming a captured imperial grenade as he waited.

"WAAAAAGH!" The Orks rounded the corner with a terrible war cry as he waited…. Then pushed the trigger for the mines. About a dozen orks fell instantly. The grenade killed another four, and finally he finished off the remaining with a long burst raking the alley with his carbine and the orks suddenly found themselves in the afterlife listening to Vogon poetry read by a particularly mean warp entity.

There's some culture even the orks can't manage to ignore no matter how much they might want to.

Back in the living world Mur'Phon checked the corpses and grabbed whatever weapons looked to be of imperial manufacture and hence would actually (mostly) obey the laws of physics pawing them off to Gordonius who hid them inside his cloak. That one most assuredly didn't obey said laws.

"Where are all the people?" Miku asked from behind them.

"If my Thermal readout was correct, huddling inside the houses hoping to not get noticed."

"You get thermal vision in that thing? Can I take it apart to see how the Tau make them, just for comparison purposes of course."

Before Mur'Phon could yell no Miku's gasp of horror ended.

"We got to help them!"

"Right… How? Make sure they are nice and tender so they don't get chewed as much?" Mur'Phon replied sarcastically.

"Not funny! You came up with a way to stop those... Tyra-somethings using nothing but an old freighter and a few billion tons of alcohol. Can't you stop a few hundred green things when you got an entire village to work with?"

"Right now they are more liable to just shoot at us than listen to us!" Mur'Phon spoke back agiated.

"You don't know that unless you try! How can you be so... so... heartless!?"

"Look... I want to get home and live to a ripe old age. Being the cranky old bastard in the cadre whom everyone of the youngsters despise and wish would die in a horrible accident, but never does since the universe just plain hates them that much." Mur'Phon finished in a single breath.

Miku and Gordonious both blinked repeatedly.

"Well... That's certainly an unique life ambition..."

"I'm an unique individual. Now I say we run on, let this village slow the Orks down a few minutes and…" Suddenly something was slipped off his shoulder. He reached back.

"Hey give me back my carbine! I need it to get home alive."

Miku stood there looking defiant. She had finally had enough of being ignored by the more ruthless members of the group. In her arms she cradled Mur'Phon's pulse carbine.

"We WILL help these villagers." She stated firmly.

"Or else what?" Was she threatening him? She wasn't even pointing the weapon and he doubted she was able to even consider shooting anyone with it.

"Or else I'm giving this to Gordonius for disassembly."

Gordonious looked gleeful.

"I do not believe it will be necessary to stay in this village. Let us just push on." It was clear that on the inside he was doing his happy dance.

"You, you blackmailing little..."

She started slowly holding it out towards Gordonius who reached out after it.

"Okay, okay! We'll try to help these villagers!"

Gordonious snatched out after the carbine, but Miku pulled it away JUST before he could grasp it. She gave a beautiful smile.

"I knew I could get you to see reason."

Mur'Phon and Gordonius both mumbled some less savory things about the female gender regardless of species under their breath.
___________________________________________________________


"Hello? Anyone alive in here?" Mur'phon called into the darkness. A shotgun blast blew a big hole next to his head.

"Never mind, that's answer enough." He commented.

Another blast missed him.

"Look if you shoot again I'll start shooting back. And trust me, I'm a better shot." He heard the sounds of someone fumbling a reload and rushed in.

The mayor was behind an overturned table with an old fashioned double barreled shotgun. Mur'Phon put his own weapon to his head.

"Could we please discuss this as civilized beings instead of just exchanging fire like a bunch of rednecks?"

The mayor dropped his weapon in panic.

"Please don't kill me."

Mur'Phon slapped the forehead of his helmet.

"Look I don't plan to kill you. I'm here to help."

The mayor finally calmed down a bit.

"Really? You are with the army?"

"Er… Not exactly?"

"The guard?!"

"Not quite..."

"The arbites?"

"Well... I work with them on occasion."

"Who are you with then?" The farmer asked with a sinking feeling.

"Myself and two friends."

The Mayor sat in stunned silence.

"If it's any consolation we have a tendency to cause mass destruction." Mur'Phon added.
_______________________________________________________________

The Guide has this to say with making use of untrained locals in desperate situations:

So you are stranded out in a town somewhere, not many troops with you and many, many enemies against you. Obviously at some point someone gets the bright idea of putting the civies out on the front line. Now. On paper it looks good, they will at very least draw fire from the guys with guns.

Just one thing to remember:

THEY SUCK!

They suck harder than a black hole. Harder than an imperial prostitute. In a fight they are as liable to run around screaming and being distracting as shooting their buddies by accident. Quite a bit lower is the chance that they lay down ineffective fire. On par with the odds of you getting granted a whole inhabitable planet for yourself by bureaucratic error is the chance that they put effective fire on the enemy.

Obviously the solution would seem to be to train them, but that takes time. Better to put them to use building tons of booby traps from hell while your regular troops get ready for more.

However a firewarrior often don't get a choice in the matter. The bosses have decided to use them and then you have to live with it, Then the golden rules are:

1: Don't stand in front of them no matter what. Getting shot in the back sucks.

2: Don't stand near them at all if you can help it. They will with their antics and hysterics likely draw more fire.

3: Don't pay any attention to them. If they run it's not necessarily a given that things are that bad, use your own judgement, not theirs. As a rule of thumb usually you should be running before they decide to flee.

4: If things are that bad that you need to run and they haven't noticed don't let them see you run away. That way they'll stay and slow down the enemy for a few seconds. If at all possible try to pick out the slower ones to work with you. The one who are slightly overweight and such. If you can outrun them it'll take the enemy a shot or a second to kill them so you gain slightly more advantage.

5: Act like you know what the hell you are doing and that this is easy. It'll make them less annoying and less likely to run. Hence giving you more of a headstart.

6: The only good news, whatever your gender, the opposite sex when scared shitless are easy.

That's about all I can think off that's ever come up in this scenario.
________________________________________________________________

"Shouldn't we you know, train them or something?" Miku asked.

"With only a few hours? We would not stand a chance." Gordonius remarked back

Mur'Phon was asking various inhabitants out on what they had to fight with. So far it wasn't looking good.

"No chemical industry, no construction explosives. No serious engineering or construction equipment. No explosives. Just what do you do here."

"Farming mostly."

Mur'Phon paused, considered, and then.

"You know I take back the no explosives statement." Under his helmet he was grinning like a madman.
______________________________________________________________

*Two years ago.*

"Ah there you are Shas'El."

Shas'El Ou'Gama looked up from the map. It had to happen any moment now.

"And you are? I'm busy trying to get all these trainees to shoot in the same direction on the same day."

"Shas'Vre I'Fumo. I'm sent by O'Garg'Amel to get clarification on some unusual reports."

O'Ou'Gama didn't need to think to remember exactly what he'd sent that could be the subject.

"I want that kid OUT of my base pronto."

"We read over his record. There is nothing there warranting any special actions against him. Nor do you present any solid proof."

"There isn't any. He doesn't do anything. Things just well... Go wrong in the worst way possible when he's involved for everyone else involved."

"Surely you are joking." Vre'I'Fumo found that statement ridiculous.

Just then there was a small tremor in the ground. By experience Ou'Gama threw himself to the ground.

I'Fumo however was blown off his feet by the shockwave when the fertilizer silo in the simulated farmland battlefield blew up.

It shouldn't be possible. First Tau fertilizer should be more stable than that, secondly the silo wasn't supposed to be filled with the real thing in the first place just incase. Things had to have gone really wrong for that to happen.

As I'Fumo picked himself up the ground Ou'Gama went over and lent him a hand.

"I dare wager the recruit in question is in that direction." He pointed in the general direction of the crater out there.
_____________________________________________________________________

"You sure that's all the fertilizer you got?"

"Should be. May be one or two bags left over at Johnsons."

"Go check. We need every bit you have." Mur'Phon knew it wouldn't be ready in time, but it would keep the mayor out of his hair (What little the Tau got) until this was over.

"You aren't going to blow up the village are you?" Miku was unsure here. She didn't have any experience with this sort of thing, the only thing Mur'Phon had said was that he could get it to explode.

"Nah, just the Orks. It'll be a big boom though."

"So basically you are turning the area just outside the city into a giant booby trap, but how are you going to get the Orks in there?" Miku asked.

"I have that worked out. Say could you do me a favor? Some kid dropped this when we pulled them to the far end of town. Could you go return it?" He held out a small teddy bear.

"Sure. I'd love to."

Mur'Phon shook his head as she swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker. The way she was acting he did not want her to find out just how he was intending to get the Orks into the kill zone.

He went over to give the last pep talk to the bait, who of course had not been briefed about the bomb.

"Right. Here's the situation. There's a shit-load of green-skins heading this way. They are big, they are mean, but they are dumb and not as brave as you'd think. As long as they feel sure of winning they'll keep fighting, but the moment victory is in doubt they'll break and run. Because of that we'll use some deceit. You will be in cover here so they can't accurately count you."

In reality the holes made it near impossible to run without dying as they would take too long to get out.

"And you will lay down as much fire as possible. Accuracy is secondary, what matters is that you make it seem that the absolutely heaviest fighting is in this end of the village. That will give them pause and probably make them fall back. We should be able to keep this up for weeks if we have to, long enough for the guard to mop them. Orks are after all horribly overrated due to how savage they are. We can and we WILL stop them. And it's up to you to scare them off. Remember, put up as much fight as possible, if they don't get scared off they will at least try to avoid you and go straight into the traps we've set on the flanks. Got that?"

"We will stop these xeno scum cold!" One of them exclaimed.

"Good. We're all counting on you."

He had picked out the most bigoted, the most zealous, the least educated and finally those who had during his short stay managed to insult the Tau. They'd make nice bait.

He heard bolter fire in the distance.

"Here they come. I'm heading back to the command center to coordinate things. Good luck." He walked away briskly.

Then as soon as he was out of sight broke into a run. He didn't want to get caught in the blast if Gordonius panicked and set it off early.

He ran into the clock tower set up as makeshift command post.

"How far out are they?"

"They are about two hundred meters out now and starting a headlong rush. Not that many weapons so the defenders aren't taking that heavy casualties yet. They are laying down quite a bit of fire."

"It'll do. We'll wait until the first units are in hand to hand range before we set it off. That should give us the highest body count. Given how many they are killing, I'd say about thirty seconds. We better get to the ground floor."
"Indeed."

They rushed down to hit the detonator. Miku came running just as they were getting down.

"What's going on? Did they show up early?!" She was agiated.

"Cover your ears!" Mur'Phon yelled as Gordonius reached for the switch?

Miku had been around them long enough to act immediately. And it saved her hearing from any permanent damage.

The blast was tremendous, Mur'Phon hadn't skimped on destructive power.

A few minutes passed without anyone saying anything. No sounds of anything orky. It appeared they had gotten all in this group.

Then the mayor showed up carrying a bag of fertilizer. He was in shock.

"You blew up half the town!!!"

Miku immediately tried to calm him down.

"Now I'm sure Murphy didn't mean to do that..."

As if on cue Mur'Phon turned to Gordonius.

"I got the impression the blast was going to be larger?"

"Well it should have been, but the fertilizer obviously wasn't as high grade as I thought it was."

Miku shot them an evil (As in the usual as threatening as a small kitty) glare.

"Was it really necessary?"

"You had any better idea how to get them all? I had to put it that close or they would be too spread out. It's better to lose a few building than all the inhabitants."

Miku stood defiant for a second, then relented.

"You are right. Atleast you didn't use the people as bait."

"Uh yeah at least there's that." Mur'Phon said glad that his helmet covered his face.

"I hate to interrupt, but frankly we should get a move on before the shock wears off. Quite a few of the citizens aren't going to be that understanding."

"I can see why that would be the case yeah." Mur'Phon said.

"We're sorry for the destruction." Miku said as she turned and followed them.
A few hours later a mob with pitchforks and torches formed, but by then they were long gone.
__________________________________________________________________________

The Farseer... Just couldn't believe it.

Sure it was more sensible than how they had neutralized the Tyranids, but the consistency in how they screwed up her predictions was unbelievable.

It was as if that damned blueskin was screwing over everyone involved by his presence alone.

She could see a few more paths to success, but they were far harder to execute, and right now she felt certain that somehow that Mon'Keigh would get in the way.

She did something no Farseer had ever done before. She swore out loud with enough fervor and imagination to make seasoned sailors blush red enough that they'd attract bulls from all over the planet.
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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Sha'Eil = Eldar word for Warp

Chapter 11: Dreamtime.

"Aren't you being a touch too paranoid?" Miku asked.

"Well it's better to be safe than sorry." Mur'Phon replied.

"But you've been setting up enough traps to take out half an army." She continued.

"Yeah I know it's not quite enough to be really safe, but some is better than nothing."

Mur'Phon had been setting up traps the entire afternoon after they stopped. So far it was hard to find a single inch of ground not trapped once you started entering their perimeter.

"You've known him longer than me. Is he always like this?" Miku asked Gordonius.

"I've only known him about five minutes longer, but based on that: Yes he's always like this. And it'll be the same answer next time you ask too." He replied.

Miku sighed. The only reason she stuck around was that she had nowhere else to go. She was beginning to reconsider that. She just hoped the entire forest wasn't depopulated by these traps. And she REALLY hoped she didn't have to pee in the darkness, that'd be equivalent with suicide.
_________________________________________________________________________

The Aspect warrior approached the farseer cautiously. She had been acting erratically as of late.

"Are you sure we need so many warriors just to kill one mon-keigh? I mean those blue skinned people while having an impressive rate of advancement are still inferior. What is the worst that could happen?" He asked trying to sound as respectful as possible.

When she turned towards him he regretted speaking up. There was definitely a trace of crazy in the expression.

"The worst that could happen? The worst that could happen?! The worst that could happen would be a huge mon-keigh army appearing out of nowhere. Or a ship in orbit having a weapons malfunction and in-avertedly nuking our force from orbit. Or the Sha'Eil opens up spontaneously swallowing us all!" Her temper was getting the better of her.

He stood in shock. A Farseer never lost their temper.

"That Khaine-damned blue-skinned little excuse for an inferior being has messed up my plans for the last time! I plot out every detail. Everything is precisely calculated. Then he fucking wanders in and fucks over the khaine-damned prophesies like they were just drunken hallucinations! And when I'm finished with him and this damned planet I will find a sizeable hive fleet or Ork waagh to redirect straight at the rest of them to ensure these blueys never fuck them up again! That'll teach the universe not to follow my khaine-damned prophesies!"

He slowly edged away from her until he was sure she wasn't watching and then bolted.

Their best farseer had gone completely loco. What the hell was up with that mon-keigh that he was able to achieve that?
______________________________________________________

"We've got the orks under control." The PDF Colonel stated.

"Oh? How did you do it?" The inquisitor asked idly curious.

"Some ruthless Bounty hunter blew up half a village with the orks in it taking out a huge chunk of their advance."

"Interesting. Send out a word to watch for this hunter but take no action. He may be useful. Perhaps we can hire him to hunt for that Tau before it does any damage."

"I will see to it personally." Any excuse to get away from the inquisitor.
______________________________________________________

The trio was fast asleep in the darkness. On a nearby tree a bird landed and was suddenly garroted by one of Mur'Phon's traps, it was fast and silent and the bird never had a chance to make a noise.

Miku was supposed to have taken first watch, but despite the Dark Eldar preferring darkness she had been tired and fallen asleep. They had no idea on the Eldar Strike force heading towards them with intent to kill.

And the Eldar strike force had no idea what they were getting into. In Miku's hand was the pad she had found in Mur'Phon's backpack. She was having some trouble reading it, but was starting to figure it out. Apparently it was named Firewarrior's guide. By sheer coincidence she had left the file on Eldar open.
______________________________________________________

Firewarriors guide:

Eldar are an old race which looks remarkably similar to humans, but don't say that to their face if you want to live. These guys are more arrogant than all water caste social science teachers put together. You know the kind you had during your childhood to teach you on why the Tau will rule the universe eventually. A single one of the Eldar can easily outmatch all of these. And they HATE being compared to humans. Myself I'm hard pressed to tell the difference. At least as long as we're not fighting, then it's easy.

Simple study has led to the conclusion that there are in fact two kinds of Eldar. The first is the most well known. The manipulative bastards with worldships. The second are shadowy raiders.

The manipulative bastards are by far the most arrogant of the lot. Frankly they are the most arrogant beings I've ever seen. They are also the most common insofar that can be applied to Eldar given their rarity.

Before we talk about their real fighting capabilities there is one vital fact you got to know about them: They cheat somewhat fierce.

Thanks to a special variant of the Eldar known as Farseers they can literally see possible futures and plan accordingly. Consequently they rarely engage unless they've foreseen a victory. However it also means that if you manage to surprise them (Hard, but not impossible) they run around like scared clone beasts and die about as easily. Run pointy ears, run hehehe!

While it doesn't always work there are a few good tricks to use against them. The chief of them is to be aware of their ability and act accordingly. If you normally could count on reinforcements change the plan to be without them, they either intend to be in and out before they get there or are preventing them from arriving somehow. Oddly enough they rarely foresee commanders doing that. They see the idea of us actually outguessing them as so foreign that their sheer arrogance might let us outsmart them. The very idea of us achieving much is seen as ludicrous.

I have ordered all my subordinates to shoot me if I ever start acting that arrogant.

Nine out of ten plans against them rely on working with their arrogance. Pretending to flee in face of them has an oddly high success rate too despite the fact that they have to have foreseen that possibility, unless the unit you flee from has a Farseer with them they seem to just forget that we're probably bluffing and just follow as they assume we're cowards in face of their superiority. This when it works is perhaps the most fun way. I got numerous recordings of their faces when they realize too late that it was a ruse and we're about to kill them.

In combat they rely on speed and short range firepower. Hit hard and hit fast. They do however insist on such tall helmets that we can headshot them from much farther away. And even if we don't kill them the heat wash will usually give them severe headaches equal to…. Oh I don't know, the hangover from drinking a freighter packed full with alcohol perhaps. That'll usually take them out of action for a while. Try to keep them at range as they are better in hand to hand, but don't get into shootouts with heavy shooting units unless you got a significant edge in numbers or superior support firepower.

Techwise their arrogance is actually somewhat justified, what they got is far ahead of us. And as a lot of it is warp based we got little chance of replicating it.

However they tend to rely on overly advanced. A lot of their weapons are a lot more advanced than our stuff which relies more on brute force, but as a lot of them have felt personally... Brute force HURTS. Thankfully their arrogance keeps them from realizing that in some respects we actually have better gear.

Have I mentioned that their arrogance if it had mass would have formed several supermassive black holes?

However unlike many listings in this guide it's actually possible to occasionally work with them, but whenever you do you'll want to punch them in the face before it's over. They refuse to talk out straight what is going on preferring riddles and vague statements that you usually need to be familiar with Eldar culture to get. Obviously they want to use this to pretend to be so much smarter. If they had been out straight I'd have been much more impressed. As I'm actually familiar enough with Eldar culture by now I can honestly say it's rarely as impressive as they make it sound when put in clear words.

Standard alliance rules though. They'll stab you in the back the first chance they get, so make sure you stab first.

And if they mention the word stargods make sure you got orbital fire support. You are going to need it. Damn metal skeletons.
________________________________________________________

Coincidences were the order of the night. At the same time a few Eldar rangers stood quite some distance away from the camp.

"This has to be a joke." The lead one said.

"It has to be... One Mon'Keigh can't do anywhere near this much in only a few hours."

The traps were well hidden. A human could have easily wandered straight into them. Eldar were far more capable though. They were good at spotting traps and could see most of them. They really wished they couldn't though.

It appeared to be incredibly dense field of primitive traps stretching for several hundred meters in all directions. And they had to get through it to reach their target.

"Well... Let's just get started."

Fun fact about Eldar senses. While they are good they are not quite as good as they think they are. A well made trap will be invisible to them as well as normal humans.

And when they are busy avoiding all the traps they CAN see it's rather easy to miss them in the sheer amount of traps in their way.

The point man took three careful steps into the trap field, then suddenly got hit by a big piece of wood hanging by a rope and slammed into a tree.

The remaining members of the group looked on each other.

"Er... You go first." The leader said.
_____________________________________________________________

Gordonius's mind was a weird place. This carried over to his dreams.

He was running. Inside what appeared to be some sort of mechanical, but electrically powered item of small size, now supersized.

For some reason he tied the words "Simple hand watch" to it. And he was being followed by monkeys with wrenches intent on wrecking his augmentics.

"By the Omnissiah I will not let you wreck my machine pieces!" He cried out as he ran as fast as he could looking for some sort of weapon to fight them with as he jumped from one cog to the next. That was when he spotted the old Skitaari uniform and grabbed it. Immediately turning into a super augmented soldier with a really big gun.

"I hear monkey brains are tasty. Should we test that hypothesis?" He asked the monkeys

The rest of the dream was a lot more entertaining for him.

Though the monkeys didn't agree with that...
____________________________________________________

"Hello?" Miku said. It was an odd place.

She stood in a room, similar to the inn they had spent the night in last night, nice wooden place, but the door out was black and very spiky. She felt an immediate revulsion against opening it, but she couldn't see any other way out.

"You have to open it Lilanna." Came a voice from behind. She spun around. here stood a woman who looked almost exactly like her. The only thing that was really different was her face. It was fixed in a state of contempt and well... Meanness was the best word. She seemed to smell blood to Miku.

"Who are you? And why are you calling me Lilanna?" She asked.

The stranger fixed her with a gaze that implied that she was seen as little more than an annoying child.

"Because that is who you are. If you can't acknowledge it, you will forever stay a weak little girl, locked in that fate the same as locked in this little room."

Lilanna. When she had been asked what she was called it had been the first thing she had thought of, but she had rejected it because... She felt something bad with the name. Something that should stay buried. She got the same feeling from this door.

Lilanna sounded better, but Miku felt like it was clean of whatever tainted Lilanna. A fresh start perhaps?

"I don't want to. I'll find another way out."

"There is no other way out. You are telling yourself that you are happier like this, but it is an illusion. You are what you are. And you cannot change that no more than the sun can stop setting."

"On some worlds it doesn't set you know. The planet effectively doesn't rotate in comparison with the sun so it stays up all the time on one side, and down all the side on the other with a habitable belt running along the twilight edge between them." She had read that in the guide earlier tonight. It seemed a nice reply.

"THAT ISN'T THE POINT YOU STUPID BITCH! YOU HAVE TO OPEN THIS DOOR OR STAY LOCKED UP FOREVER!!!" The dark version of her yelled at Miku, she was definitely not happy at being upstaged like that.

"Then open it yourself then if it's so important!!" Miku called back. The room was boring, but she would NOT open the door.

"I can't! I'm just a figment of your subconscious!"

"Excuse me." Came from a third source somewhere to the side of them.

It was yet another copy of her. This one seemed more generally annoyed.

"Didn't we lock you up in a safe, wield it shut, dump you into an ocean, dump the planet into the webway, then the webway into a warp rift and put armed sentries at the entrance?"

"You can't keep me down! I represent the real Lilanna! Not this mockery of a shadow of her former self!"

"Right..." The new one walked over to the door and opened it.

"No don't!!!" The evil version screamed as tentacles lashed out from inside, grabbed her, and pulled her in as she screamed.

Then the newcomer turned to Miku.

"Listen girl, whatever she said disregard it. Us others think you are doing just fine, but whenever there's a big change for the better there are always a few conservative elements who try to get it back to the old status quo."

Miku looked at the newcomer, then at the dark door with screaming coming from inside.

"What is happening to her?"

"Let's just say that you used to have a really dirty imagination." The newcomer said with a weird smile.

"Okaaaaay." Miku said not really wanting to know more.

"So... How do I get out of here?" She asked after she had managed tune out the noises from the dark door.

"I was thinking you'd use the window she was blocking your view of."

The window wasn't big, but she'd have no problems fitting through it. Outside was a beautiful sunny field, with the sun JUST dimmed enough not to hurt her light sensitive eyes. She could swear it had a smiley face on it.

"Okay thanks." Miku said as she headed for the window.

"Just remember. Us rest of us like the new you way better than the old you. Let that sleeping dog lie."

"I will. See yah!" Miku said as she climbed out the window.

"Phew. For a moment here I though we would have to deal with a few shiploads of angst." The figment of Miku's mind said as she faded away.
________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon was confused, thoroughly so.

It was a huge complex. Clearly imperial construction, but it was unlike anything he had seen before.

People walked by completely ignoring him. In one case walking through him as if he was a ghost.

He was wearing his full combat gear, not the bounty hunter getup he was currently wearing in the real world.

And he felt an unexplainable drag towards some unknown destination. As he walked people thinned out, and of those some sort of soldier type, remiscent of Space Marines yet different from them. Somehow he got the impression they were more dangerous.

Then he was in front of some huge doors. Closed, he knew they wouldn't open somehow. So he walked over to touch them. And he gasped as his hand slid right through the door like it wasn't there.

He steeled himself, then walked into it.

The chamber on the other side was not somewhere pleasant. He un-slung his weapon on reflex.

Something felt very wrong in this chamber.

He turned around. And almost dropped his weapon in shock!
________________________________________________________________

They had gotten a whole twenty meters into the trap field, they had however lost fifteen of their number to get there. By now they had stopped using Rangers and instead were using plain guardians to do it. That had upped their casualty rates, but at least they'd have some rangers left when they got through it. Another one was garroted by a string trap they had missed due to being distracted by all the other traps.

"I'm beginning to see why this mon'keigh managed to drive her nuts." One of them said.

"Yes. I have a hard time believing anyone can set up this many traps in that short a time."

Another one was speared a bit forward.

"We should have brought vehicles or swooping hawks for this.."

"Unfortunately the other farseers nixed that saying that we wouldn't need them for this mission. I'm beginning to think they are trying to get rid of her and just letting us die to get that done."

"Given her mad laughter as she personally grabbed a missile launcher I can't honestly blame them. Just wish we could do it with less body count."

The troops were starting some serious grumbling against the Farseer.
_______________________________________________________________

It made him think of a throne, but to him it appeared to be an abomination. Tendril like cables running across, crude looking crafts that gave the man sitting on the throne an even more worn look. The corps-esque look of the man using the throne didn't help the overall impression. It looked horrific.

"Not a pretty sight is it?"

He turned around. The man behind him didn't look ancient in the normal sense. No long beard, no shriveled body. But he just felt old despite a powerful visage.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm the guy on that throne." The man answered.

"But that'll make you..." Mur'Phon's mind went as a Necron Cruiser on all full ahead and loaded dice.

"That's right. I'm the God Emperor of Mankind. Or righteous dead dude if you prefer that. I kinda like that nickname a Guardsman out near Cadia came up with."

"This is one fucked up dream." Mur'Phon said more to thin air.

"Well it was the best way to get in touch with you."

The man turned towards the throne.

"I don't know why I spend so much time here. Perhaps just to remind myself what can happen when I make a mistake? Let's get to somewhere a bit more friendly."

The setting shifted abrupbtly. Now it was snow and ice, and they were in the middle of a big group of weird animals.

They were beaked, black and white and didn't look like they could fly.

The man petted one of them on the head idly. "Emperor Penguins, I always liked these guys. It's a real shame they are extinct now. I really wish the inquisition hadn't destroyed that picture of me as an Emperor Penguin. That one was funny."

"What the hell do you want with me?" Mur'Phon was getting really confused.

"Well... To be frank I need your help. You have wandered straight into a very complex game. And your first actions have so far thrown a few of the players completely out of whack. Elaborate plan over elaborate plan. Chess on a grand scale, however you in the game is the equivalent of setting a small 3 year old against the chessboard. You are lucky if you get all the pieces back intact."

"Uh... What?"

"Did I lapse into vague statements again? I'm sorry. It's a bad habit for us really old and powerful. I'll try to be direct." He cleared his throat.

"The planet you are on is a vital piece in the galactic struggle. And you are the only one who can prevent total disaster."

"What?! Why me? Aren't you in charge of the whole Imperium? Don't you have bazillions of followers to fall back on?!"

"I would have if they would just listen! Do you have any idea how frustrating it is?! I give a reasonably clear statement yet they insist on interpreting it like 'The emperor wants us to kill all left handed people because they are horrible mutants' or 'The Emperor says we need to give more offering'. They are just so... So damn over the top fanatical and zealous that they just plain can't take any sense! I gave up trying to talk to people directly millennia ago because of that! Seriously! Is it too much to ask that people just try to listen once in a while instead of just being rabid foaming on the mouth fundamentalists who just want to keep being that!? And don't get me started on the inquisition..."

Mur'Phon had just made a huge mistake. It was a sore subject apparently. And once the righteous dead dude had started he wouldn't stop for a while.
_______________________________________________________________

The eldar were working their way through. The bodycount was still building, but all the blood spilled had an odd effect.

The beast stirred. The smell of blood carried far. And now a lot of it was spilled. It started homing in on it. It would take a while to get there, but then even more blood would flow.

The eldar were blissfully unaware of this. After all they relied on their Farseer's visions. And they were completely unavailable while they were acting directly against Mur'Phon.

"We're almost there now. Just a little bit more and we'll see them. Then we'll just shoot them in their sleep and leave." The ranger said.

Just then there was a click. He recognized that sound. That was the sound of an imperial anti-personnel mine about to go off.

"Oh Sha'Eil."

The blast from the claymore type weapon shredded half a dozen eldar. And the others set up to effectively enfilade the area killed far more.
__________________________________________________________________

"I did NOT want that world exterminatused. Yet they did it anyway! Honestly..."

Mur'Phon just sat there resigned as the Emperor ranted. Finally the emperor caught himself.

"Oh crap. I'm almost out of time. I got carried away with my rant. Listen young Tau. You got to evade the eldar and get to..." That was all he managed before the mine went off and woke him with a start.
___________________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon immediately on reflex grabbed his weapon and sent a grenade downrange towards the explosions.

At the target location the Ranger leader couldn't believe his luck. He had escaped almost unscathed. Just then he heard the grenade.

"Not again."

This time he wasn't so lucky.

Mur'Phon laid down a barrage of grenades as the other two got up.

"We got to get out of here now!" Mur'Phon yelled as he searched for targets.

"Who is attacking us?"

"I got no idea! Just move it!"

The sole escape route, covered in slightly less hidden but bogus traps was their only hope.

Unfortunately Mur'Phon's bad luck held for him too.

They skidded to a halt in front of the sizeable group of Eldar infantry.

The leader, a female Eldar with long red hair flowing out from under her helmet fixed her gaze on Mur'Phon.

"You cannot run. This young Mon'keigh is where you die."
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Authors note: When I first fleshed out the farseer I was afraid I had gone too far, that she was much too over the top.

And then I played Dark Crusade and saw Taldeer there in her death scene acting in a remarkably similar (Albeit a tad more restrained in language) manner. Again I find that published 40K has already matched or exceeded anything I can do in FWG, it's almost scary how similar the stuff is on occassion, the difference is merely presentation for the most part.


Chapter 12:

The Tau ethereal was worried. Not really for anything major, just his own personal safety.

Sure a normal Tau was supposed to be one hundred percent loyal to them, but this commander was surely insane.

"Run that by me again. Are you telling me that this sole firewarrior somehow caused six rather small waaghs and three splinter fleets to attack the Tau, as well as two space marine companies? And the moment he goes MIA presumed KIA they all end up on a small worthless rock out there fighting each other alongside a small force of those so called Necrons?

"It's hard to believe I realize, but this Shas'La seems to have rather... Unusual effects. I have been following spy reports coming out from Tarvin where he went MIA. There are fragmentary reports of a lone Tau being present at various massively improbable events. Like an entire splinter fleet suddenly becoming combat ineffective and blown away by a much smaller force."

Okay that was odd, but surely nothing as insane as this could be the answer? The Ethereal thought.

"And just what do you recommend we do with said firewarrior?" The ethereal asked.

"Your highness, this Shas'la is a menace to any and all sapients foolish enough to have him in their midst. Therefore he must never be allowed to come home. If a La'Gir'Ar shows up at any of the border worlds we should have issued shoot to kill orders."

The ethereal looked at the records, especially at the squad that had trained alongside them, as a single name caught his eye.

"You sure you don't mean the Shas'La by the name Mur'Phon, that name does mean..."

"...I thought so at first too, but the records are conclusive. It is La'Gir'Ar who has to be the culprit." The Shas'O cut him off.

Neither of them knew about the slight file mix-up that had switched the two names. The ethereal relented, after all it was better safe than sorry. Even if this Shas'O was nuts.

"Very well, you may give that order."
_____________________________________________________________________

Elsewhere in the galaxy a showdown was going down. It was a showdown that would help decide the fate of a world. It was the giants of a sector, the kind of people who can alter the course of a galaxy, whose influence makes lesser beings into mere mortals compared to the almost godlike power they have to affect things. Well one of them was.

The other was merely a redheaded pointy eared Eldar who happened to have an army with her right then.

And well to be fair the other guy never did any of that stuff on purpose either.

So I guess it was merely a showdown to right grievous wrongs one of them had done against the other.

Then again the female seeking this showdown felt the wrongs was that the Tau had not been willing to die when she did her mass murder attempts and he had stopped said mass murders as an unintentional side effect. And said target could care less if he never met the perpetrator of said mass murder attempts. He just wanted to go home.

Ah screw it, it was a showdown between a young very cynical Tau firewarrior, and one very, very pissed off Eldar farseer.

"You cannot run young Mon-keigh. This is where you die."

"What the hell did I ever do to you?" Mur'Phon called back

"You dare ask that question?!" She snapped back. Mur'Phon was beginning to get the impression she wasn't entirely mentally stable. He decided to keep her talking as long as possible while he looked for a way out.

"Yes I dare ask that question because I have never seen you before in my life. If I'm going to get killed for something I did I'd prefer if I knew what."

"You have personally endangered the entire galaxy by interfering in my plans. And you made me the laughingstock of my people in the process!"

Mur'Phon took one look behind her at the troops looking at one another. Doubt clearly visible in their body language even to a non-Eldar like Mur'Phon

"You appear to be handling that last one yourself. Honestly I got no idea what plans I supposedly ruined."

"Your primitive mind cannot comprehend them mon-keigh. You are but a spec of dust in the vast galaxy." She was getting angrier by the minute. She was making more mistakes every second it seemed.

"Can't we just... You know sit down and talk it over or something? I mean killing more people won't achieve anything." Miku said. Besides she was curious why these people looked more like her than the humans they had met so far.

"SHUT UP DARK ONE! Your kind are worthless little creatures not worthy of your blood who all deserves their eventual horrible fate. You are even worse. You are a horrible little parody of both kin whose mind is as regressed as those of the mon-keigh you surround yourself with. Worthless little shadow as you are. Only fit for a whore to the mon-keighs" The words were bad, but unlike the rest on some instinctual level she understood the body language and the slight telepathic undertones sent with them that made up a lot of the elder language.

"... You... Shouldn't..." Miku's eyes were tearing up.

"Great you made her cry. Are you happy now?" Mur'Phon commented in a derogatory voice.
"You dare talk to me like that?!"

"Gee broken vox recorder. Yes I dare talk to you like that because I think you are completely nuts. I've heard stories of how incredible you elder are. Of your great works and intellects, of how incredibly powerful you are and how no race in the universe is a match for the eldar. You aren't one of them. Not anymore. And from the looks of it your troops agree with me." Mur'Phon said. He desperately hoped his body language wasn't giving it away. He was trying to manipulate the master manipulators.

'Greatest species my blue ass.'

He was recognizing something the guide had claimed Eldar never got.
____________________________________________________________________

Firewarriors guide: Commander Fragitis:

Sometimes the troops just have enough. Their insane commander orders them to go hand to hand against space marines for some stupid nonsensical reason. Or their commander is just so criminally stupid they can't take it. Or the conditions have been horrible for too long.

They want the commander to get well and truly fragged. Usually not angry enough to do it themselves, but they won't care too much if somebody else does it. Some times they even thank the guy.

I remember a specific incident where an entire Imperial Guard company came up to thank me after I blew their commander away.

The only ones I've never seen have it is the Eldar (Who cheats to avoid such conditions) and the Necrons (For obvious reasons)

It's usually most useful if you are captured. If the army shows signs of it (Attaches is several hints on body language and other signs to recognize it), just play it up and they will usually let you 'by accident' get your hands on a weapon. When you do don't hesitate. Frag their command staff.

Sometimes they try to kill you afterwards, but that is rarer than you'd expect.

So frag away trooper!
___________________________________________________________________

The farseer was horrified. This was impossible. The mon-keigh's words were swaying her troops.

"What are you doing? Shoot him!" She demanded.

"Farseer Galiana. My humblest apologies, but you aren't being rational about this. We've lost several squads of warriors just to get this one soldier. Is it really necessary?"

"That one mon-keigh has just about single-handedly slain the devourers we sent here. And then he defeated the next attempt.

The debate went in elder, but Mur'Phon knew he was winning.

They weren't even watching him anymore. He calmly put his carbine at the shoulder and started fine aiming.

If he was going to frag a commander it was going to be a perfect shot. He wanted to be able to put her helmet on a wall back home to say: 'Yes I got to frag a commander, and a commander of a species that has never gotten hit by that before'.

If he had done it quick Galiana would not have been able to predict it, but this slow her warp senses managed to register it. She spun around and now she was the one who was staring down a weapon barrel.

"If you fire we will make you suffer horribly." She stated. She felt confident her troops would avenge her at least.

"Wait? You mean to tell me that wasn't the plan anyway?" Mur'Phon commented sardonically not lowering his weapon.

"Stop twisting my words you lowly creature."

"You seriously need to work on your insults girl. And you troops seem to be of the opinion I will be doing your species a favour by killing you. Honestly. Crazy commanders kill more people than spontaneous rifle explosions, unexplainable ammo dump detonations and accidental life support failures so it puts out gas that turns Tau yellow just before we die put together."

"You've experienced all three repeatedly haven't you?" Gordonius asked.

"Shut up mechboy." Mur'Phon said slightly stung by the fact that those had combined had in fact been the second highest reason for deaths in training while he was there.

Galiana the Farseer was scared. She looked around her, reached out with her powers. And saw that the Tau was right. The rest of the group didn't care if she lived or died, or rather they'd prefer if it was the latter.

"You have turned my warriors against me!"

"Oh I'm flattered, but I can't really take the credit. You did a splendid job yourself." Mur'phon said with a truly evil grin as he prepared to make the kill. The farseer was so stunned she could only watch as she saw what seemed as her inevitable death coming closer and closer.

Only the soft sobs from Miku broke the silence as Mur'Phon gleefully tightened his finger on the trigger to make his first commander frag.

Then the silence was broken by a thunderous roar.
____________________________________________________________

The beast was actually remarkably smart.

Anything smaller and weaker than it was food. Anything with a gun pointed at it wasn't. And anything with a gun that was looking elsewhere was fast food.

And right now it saw more fast food than the mythical empire of MacDonald supposedly had had.

The beast's cry was terrifying, big loud and nonsensical. Translated it actually meant.

"Foreign food! All right! I love foreign food!"

First order of business was to prevent them from shooting him. That was best handled with a barrel charge. It rammed into them knocking them about like bowling pins.

Then he grabbed the ones with the blades that seemed to resonate with power. He swatted the first one. Then grabbed a second and used her as a weapon. The centrifugal force ensured her sword was pointed outwards as the poor Banshee was swung around using her as an improvised power weapon cutting down her sisters in arms.

The beast was dangerously smart. If it hadn't been for how tasty these people smelled it would never have attacked anyone this heavily armed.

It was really the only one of its kind that though eldar were so incredibly delicious. It was too bad for them that Mur'Phon and team happened to end up right smack in the middle of its territory.

Satisfied that the ones with close in weapons were dead it took the now extremely dizzy banshee up to his giant maw and took a big bite mesh armour and all. It hardened under the impact, but the tremendous teeth crushed it regardless

'They have a nice crunchy crust and a soft delicious centre, the perfect food.' The beast was ecstatic.

By now the eldar were panicking.

It kicked one of the few dumb enough to stand and fight hard enough that it hit the one nearest the trio at one end.

The trio which happened to smell so disgusting it had no desire whatsoever to get close even if a few of the tasties were over there.

Yep it thought Tau smelled disgusting. However nobody told the stinky that.

The stinky hesitated for a moment, then grabbed the unconscious robed tasty in front of him and hauled it along with him.

He decided not to follow. With food this good he could certainly understand why he wanted some too. And he had enough to share one. He wished the stinky bon appetite and then started indulging himself in what was to him a culinary heaven.
________________________________________________________________

Slowly reality came back into focus. She gratefully accepted it over the nightmare with taunting blue mon-keighs who convinced avatars of khaine to use her as a football. She had no idea where that had come from.

It smelled like a cave. She wondered why she couldn't see. It took her several groggy seconds to realize she was blindfolded, as well as gagged, as well as tied up with enough rope to climb up a titan (Whoever tied her up was apparently paranoid in the extreme), and she had some sort of blocky necklace or... a collar? At that realization she wished the warp would just open up and swallow her. This was just one humiliation too many.

She tried to remember what had knocked her out. Her last recollection was an overwhelming odor.. Foot sweat?

Oh yeah she had been kicked by a huge monster that had been using one of her banshees as a makeshift sword. If she ever got back home she'd never live this down.

She started picking out the voices.

"Is it gone?" The soft voice of the dark one said.

"Nope, still sitting there munching on the corpses." The voice that made her blood boil and her hands itching to rip out his spine and choke him with it responded. Weather it was physically possible or not wasn't too high on her priority list.

"I have never seen a purple and green creature like that before. Small forearms that are surprisingly agile. Big black eyes, the jaws look somewhat like a constant smile giving it a terrifying visage. That truly is an abomination of nature." The slightly mechanical voice said.

She was gathering up her mental strength to fry all three at once with her psyker powers when Miku noticed her.

"Guys, I think she's awake."

"Ah finally" The hated voice said.

"Before you do something rash like mind-raping the three of us and doing something freaky like knocking up our minds so our heads explode in nine months or so..."

"I don't think that is possible Mur'Phon. Warp powers don't work like that."

"Maybe not, but I'm honestly not willing to take that chance. Now shut up and let me talk!"

The hated voice focused back on her.

"Simply put. The collar you got around your neck is a bomb tied to the life support indicators and brainwave monitors in my gear. If I die or get mind-fucked with they'll have to pick up your brain with a mop. Any questions?"

"Isn't that a dumb question when she's gagged like that?" The feminine voice asked.

"Right. Remove it. Just rip it off quick."

That was when the farseer realized the gag was made of duct tape. She didn't need to see the future to know that this was going to hurt.
__________________________________________________________________

The advisor was in generally not considered that smart, but she was useful in countering the xeno influence.

They were absolutely right about her common sense, but she was a tad more intelligent than she was given credit for. When she got access to the higher level stuff on how aliens seemed to be pushing in from all sides that had helped her contact the sources her lack of common sense meant were a good choice for countering alien influence.

"Are you sure about this?" She asked the cloaked man.

"Yes. That xeno has to die. Our own visions of the future have become unreliable. So far he has only ruined visions that worked against us, but that cannot last."

"If the Tau has a weapon like that, warriors who can't be predicted with normal means, they are poised to take the entire galaxy." She was horrified. Was Tarvin the testing ground of this new Tau super weapon? Common sense and she had never exactly been best buddies.

"We cannot deal with that yet, we can only kill this one." The cloaked figure decided not to point out the stupidity. 99% of all their contacts were retards or idiots in some way, either that or the imperial education were responsible for them not having a clue what they were dealing with when they contacted them.

He sure wished that this tendency didn't go up to the higher echelons though; as Abaddon the despoiler apparently fell under those 99%.
______________________________________________________________

Mur'Phon took quite a bit of enjoyment in ripping the three layered duct tape covering her mouth off. This lady had after all been the one sending ravenous hordes to eat him more than once. He took that as solid proof that it had not been his fault that all the weird stuff happened.

Yup not his fault at all...

Okay even he was starting to doubt that one by now.

There was a quick shriek of pain, then suddenly the wall behind him was hit with an eldritch storm before a flood of profanity washed over him. He was taken aback: They needed to update the guide's section on language. He had NO idea the eldar were this well versed in profanity, a serious oversight in the guide really. He also had no idea what a lot of them meant, but given that right now Miku's face was lighting up the cave with bright red it obviously wasn't that tame stuff.

"Well then let's get started. I'm only keeping you alive because I'm tired of wandering around with no idea what is going on from one disaster to the next."

"I will never break under your torture primitive."

"All right then. We'll try again after breakfast then. And un-cooperative prisoners don't get any food." He said with a grin under his helmet as they started breaking out the cooking gear right in front of her as well as the fresh food they had snagged in the village.

Galiana was hungry, she hadn't eaten for quite a while now, and with her good sense of smell it was practically torture to have fresh food being prepared just out of her reach.

This was of course was Mur'Phon's whole plan. The real slow and indirect kind of torture was always his favourite. You could always do the direct stuff later.

"Hey if you tell us what's going on we'll share some of this bacon with you." Mur'Phon said.

Galiana only hissed in anger at him.

"I was hoping you'd say that as that means more for me." Mur'Phon said with a huge grin under his helmet.

Mur'Phon loved bacon.
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

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Bretonnia

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Chapter 13

The firewarriors guide has this to say about fried bacon:

Fried bacon is simply humanity's greatest invention ever. End of article.

***********************************************************************

Mur'Phon was a fervent believer of the guide in that respect. Back in the town they had blown up when he had discovered that the general store had quite a bit of bacon he had actually squealed. Thankfully nobody else had been there to hear it at the time, but right now he was frankly for the first time since he had arrived in this sanity-forsaken system content. Bacon made everything better.

It was a little known fact that Tau in general and the fire caste branch of the species in particular found the taste of very thin slices of fried pig (Rare animal at best these days) meat incredibly tasty. So much that the ethereal caste had considered making it a controlled substance, but the scary twitching in high ranking fire caste members in the room when they suggested it had discouraged them from actually doing it.

It was notable that whenever a member of the fire caste was in charge of an expansion fleet any planet with pigs were top priority. Thankfully nobody in the Imperium had caught onto that one yet. Or perhaps it should be said to be fortunately as Firewarriors tended to have an adverse reaction to threatening their bacon.

Seeing Mur'Phon sitting there with a serene smile on his face slowly chewing the bacon was unsettling to say the least.

"His expression is starting to scare me." Miku said

"I cannot say it's reassuring for me either." Gordonius concurred.

Miku picked up one of the bacon slices and held it close to her nose for a moment before recoiling in revulsion.

"How can he eat this!? It smells so..." She searched for words. "Greasy, fatty, I don't know what best describes it."

Farther into the cave Galiana half agreed. Though as hungry as she was she'd gladly have eaten it right now. Thankfully she wouldn't have to endure it for long. Surely her kin would send a rescue effort soon.

********************************************************************

The craftworld had an aura of sadness and regret that clashed constantly with the elegant smooth design of everything on it.

Several Farseers were sitting around what looked like an extremely elaborate chess board. Several levels and it looked to a human mind incomplete as to really perceive this board you needed to be able to see it in multiple timeframes at once as well as sense the psychic emissions from the board. Only then would it start making sense. And even then it made regicide look like tic-tac-toe in comparison. Tic-tac-toe for retarded children that is.
The farseers were in a quick and not too important debate. Well unless you were stranded on a planet in Tau captivity that is.

"I forsee that Farseer Galiana has become too much of a detriment for us to afford have her in our midst." Translation: She had gone batshit insane and they’d rather not have her closer than they had to.

"I concur. We should leave her to her fate down on the planet"

"I concur as well."

"Then it's settled. So whose turn is it?" The other farseers went back to their little game

“Mine. I move this burglar gang into his neighbourhood.”

“Not too impressive a move is it?”

“It is when the Chaos force hits them next year and thanks to the burglary he can’t afford the emergency tax the governor implements so he’s forcefully drafted to go up against Slaaneshi chaos marines.”

The game essentially boiled down to each player taking a human and the one who could make him suffer the most won. The game itself could last for generations. Often the human who lost had his entire life planned out decades in advance to be the worst possible. They weren’t too picky about collateral to the people around their targets either.

It was rumoured among the eldar that the orks had been steered to Armageddon as a move in that game to fuck over a single citizen of the planet.

Yes the Eldar were really huge dicks.
********************************************************************

Yes they would not leave her in the hands of these inferiors. That much was for certain. Galiana felt reassurance flow through her.

Unfortunately for her the bacon in the pan was winding down. Which meant the content tau was about to go back being the paranoid selfish mercenary tau firmly convinced the universe was out to get him.

He grabbed the final slice, stared at it for fifteen seconds. Then slowly put it into his mouth chewing as slow as possible to make the experience last.

Then, all too soon it was over. The Bacon was gone.

He put his helmet back on, slung the rifle back over his shoulder and stood up. Happytime was over. HorribleDeathAroundEveryCornertime was about to begin.

“Okay. I’m not going to bother spending hours interrogating you. So you get one final chance. Talk or I’m getting creative.”

Galiana looked at him with contempt, but didn’t say a word. She would not break.

“All right then. I’ll respect your resolve. Congratulations bitch. You’ve been promoted from prisoner to human shield. May your career in this field leave many Tau named Mur’Phon unscathed as you get brutally killed in their place.”

He hauled Galiana brutally to her feet. She could see that Miku winced as she stood behind him.

“Isn’t that too much? I mean sure she wanted to kill us, but can we really justify doing it in return?”

“Yes.” Both males in the cave said in unison.

“But, isn’t it wrong to stoop to their level?”

“Why?” Mur’Phon asked genuinely confused.

“Just... Well...” Miku wasn’t really that well equipped to debate this so she just shut up and attempted another glare at Mur’Phon. With heavy emphasis on attempted. If anything the glares were getting even less vicious and Mur’Phon half expected feather winged puppies to start flying out of her butt.

Still. He couldn’t worry about that. She wasn’t exactly likely to go traitorous.

To Mur’Phon it was a given that this cave housed something horrible that was best left buried, but given that big purple thing prowling outside they didn’t have much choice.

He could only trust in his wits, his weaponry and his paranoid to get him out alive. Oh and perhaps his comrades might save his ass too, but relying on that was folly.

************************************************************************

“That Tau blew up an entire village.”

“Well half a village ma’am. And it stopped the orks cold. And we aren’t even sure it was the Tau. The reports aren’t sure.”

“No human in their right mind would send their own people to death like that.”

“Er... Isn’t that the definition of what the Imperial Guard is meant for?”

“That’s different!”

The advisor was trying to compilate data on the Tau’s movements. Which was easier said than done really. Just mark out a report of a major destructive fight or event and you were likely to find trace of him on the location. Then it was just putting it in time line and you had his travel. By now they had people standing by to investigate any disaster reported ASAP. So far it hadn’t given them any false leads.

“The guard are great and self sacrificing heroes of humanity who o their duty gladly with no doubt. Commissars are a nasty heretical myth put forward by traitors to lessen their greatness as it scares them.”

The man who had reported started edging closer to the door. He was a member of the commissariat on Liaison duty and when people of power started denying your existence when you stood in front of them he considered it time to leave. Yes he was one of Ciaphas Cain’s students.

This was why he was beside the door and out of sight when it burst open and a man with a laspistol in hand burst in.

“Death to the false emperor! For chaos!”

He raised his gun, but the commissar reacted instantly giving him a shove that pushed his gun to the side so it missed its aiming point with disastrous results.

You see the assassination wasn’t meant to succeed. It was meant to scare them, but somebody that stupid in the chain of command was a blessing. So when he pushed the gun aside from the aiming point to the left of the aide, he in avertedly pushed it into line with her.

The lasbolt blew her head up like an overripe melon and red mist covered the room momentarily.

“Whoops.” both assassin and commissar said in unison before looking oddly at each other. The commissar then raised his fist and punched the chaos cultist hard enough to knock him out.

The end results would be affected quite a bit by this turn of events, the immediate result was that the hunt for Mur’phon was now going to be overseen by somebody who didn’t have blind spots you could fly a squadron of blackstone fortresses in busy battle with a full on ork Waaagh fleet through. This was going to make serious trouble for our blue friend.

*****************************************************************

Back in the caves Galiana was amusing herself by mentally envisioning Mur’Phon being brutally killed. Literally every one of her visions showed that fate for him, of course that didn’t match reality as she had painfully learned by now. But she was allowed to dream right?

This was how she managed to miss that the air was slowly getting a green tinged light.

It was only several minutes later anyone started realizing something was wrong.

“Um... Is the air supposed to be green?” Miku asked.

“Hang on. Let me turn off blacksun filter for a moment. Why yes you are right. It is green. Nifty.”
“That is not ‘nifty’ as you put it. This is a place of the great enemy. We are all in horrible danger.” Galiana interjected. She had finally realized what was going on.

“Listen lady. Given how things have gone so far we are in horrible danger if we were trying to just go to the bathroom. You are going to have to be more specific than that”

“Your simple mind cannot comprehend the situation you find yourself in and in how much danger you truly are.”

“Ah yes. The classic ‘Making the situation worse through excessive arrogance’. Well my only solace is that whatever it is down there which is going to take its turn at horribly killing me. You are going to be there being killed right next to me. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.”

“If it means ending your existence my death is worth the prize.”

Mur’Phon was about to retort when a horrible sinking sensation hit him.

“Miku can I have the guide back for a moment please?”

Miku in mild shock from him using the word please just handed it over wordlessly.

He seemed to browse it for a minute then suddenly he handed it back, walked over to Galiana and slugged her in the stomach as hard as he could.

“You keep your mouth shut from now on except specific vital stuff!” The scary part was that he didn’t sound angry. He sounded terrified.

Miku glanced down on the pad on the article open. It was general travel through adverse conditions chapter. Specifically a paragraph that spoke of the probable fate if you happened to travel along with somebody of the opposite sex and you hated each other’s guts.

“Eh?”

*********************************************************************

Travelling through adverse conditions: Companions.

There are two main types of companion. Those that hate you and those that don’t.

Those that don’t are easy to deal with. There is no such thing as a useless companion. Even if the use is merely bait while you run. Work with them and you both got better odds of survival

It’s when you run into ones that hate you it’ll be interesting.

Word of advice: If you can. Waste them the moment you get an opportunity. If they are officially your enemy this goes double as being friendly with the enemy tends to lead to court martial followed shortly by semi automatic pulse fire.

Things get really messy when they are the opposite sex.

While I have never experienced this myself every story I have come across of two people of opposite sexes who hate each other being forced to get along for an extended period of time has pretty much always resulted in Romance. And in more than one case across species as well.

From a purely scientific viewpoint it’s annoying that the Ethereals punish that sort of thing by immediate execution. It would be interesting to see how that’d play out in a long term relationship.

From a tactical viewpoint though it’s never wise to piss them off without alibi and deniability so that sort of thing better wait.

If you find yourself forced to travel with for an extended period somebody of the opposite sex who hates you and you hate them. Give in to your hatred and waste them now. Ammo is cheap, your life isn’t.

*******************************************************************

The green light was all pervasive now. Miku was getting jittery. The light unnerved her on some primal level. Which was why she appreciated having Galiana on her shoulder much more than she’d admit.

The Farseer didn’t seem happy about it, but after that punch to her gut she hadn’t been able to keep the pace Mur’Phon demanded so she didn’t have much choice

“You should try to be a bit nicer you know. Mur’Phon isn’t so bad once he stops thinking you are about to kill him any second now. He’s just very frightened of everything.”

“The feelings of...” Galiana had to cough for a moment. “The feelings of lesser beings are beneath me.” She wanted to attempt some quiet dignity right now, but she had to get this damn retarded dark one to shut up first.

“Why do people insist on that? If we could just all accept eachother the universe would be a much better place.”

“You are a disgrace for our race.”

“See. That’s the kind of thing you should stop saying. It hurts people when you say that.”

“You are incapable of understanding what is at stake here.” Sure she wanted to maintain quiet dignity, but no Eldar worth their salt would pass up a chance to put down a perceived lesser

“Sure I do. There’s some hidden threat on this planet which is a threat to the whole galaxy if it goes unchecked. You were pretty clear on that.”

Galiana couldn’t help but gape. Perhaps she had underestimated this deviant.

“What? You did say so up there. I’m sure the boys picked up on it too.” Or perhaps not.

“You are aware they don’t have the same senses you do right?”

“They don’t? That explains a lot actually. Like why Mur’Phon didn’t see that cave with those am-something things in it before walking over it....”

Galiana was cursing the gods for putting her in this predicament.

“...Or why Gordonius though Mur’Phon might not see him when he tried to steal his gun a few nights back.”

“Why do you have to be so stupid?! You admit the galaxy is at risk, and yet you still care about these insignificant little details?” She couldn’t take it anymore. Quiet dignity her ass.

“Because if it may end at any moment. Isn’t that all the more reason to enjoy life and live while you can at the moments you can’t do anything about it? Caring about those and knowing the gravity of the situation isn’t mutually exclusive you know. You shouldn’t always assume the worst about people. That’s what got you into this situation.”

Why did the universe persist in taunting her?! Just when she thought she had this girl (She couldn’t get herself to consider her a woman) figured out she had to go and say something deep.

What had she done to piss off the gods?

Suddenly Mur’Phon held up his hands for silence.

There were quiet metallic noises. Kinda like slow footsteps of metal feet.

Mur’Phon peered around the corner.

“Ah crap.”

“What?” Miku whispered.

“I’m not really surprised, but it’s still not pleasant to see when we have to get past them.”

“The great enemy...”

“Necrons. One of the few aliens I know off that hasn’t tried to kill me yet at some point. I should’ve known they’d want their turn.”
have no fear, CHAOS is here!

eskimoene har 23 ord for snø, Immortal har 24

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Fantasy:

Bretonnia

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Space Marines (Space Wolves)
Chaos Marines (Slaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanesh)

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