Ahzek Toth - Administratum Overseer and Sage
Gizmoticus Gearmus - Tech-Priest of Mars and Leader of Mechanicum Forces
Cmdr. Magnus Valerius - Leader of Ground Forces and Former Arbitrator
Lt. Solidius Anguis - Undercover Vindicaire Temple Assassin
The Story This Far
It is the 31st Millenium. Everything's pretty cool, and not grim or dark. The Emperor is a swell guy, and he is leading the Empire of Man across the galaxy to unite humanity in his Great Crusade. But alas, his glorious son Horus has rebelled, and the traitor is joined by three Astartes Legions: the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children and World Eaters. The Emperor has sent seven other legions lead by his sons, the Primarchs, off to Horus' stronghold-world of Istvaan V to end the rebellion. But this is not their story.
This is the story of the 231st Expeditionary Fleet, also known as the "Two-Thirty-Worst". To date, they have failed every mission they have been assigned. On their last mission, most of the Fleet was destroyed, including the entire compliment of Mechanicum except for Gizmoticus. And yet, they have survived, and limped back to the Imperial homeworld of Terra with their four surviving ships. The leaders of the 231st, Fleet Captain Lundgren, Magnus, Gizmoticus, and Solidius, have gathered in a briefing room to receive their next assignment from a member of the Imperial Fists legion.
Briefing
Instead of a space marine, a twelve year old boy, in what Magnus recognized as initiate's robes, walked into the room, and introduced himself as Cyrus; clearly a slight against the 231st, who apparently weren't worth the time of a proper Astartes. In a high-pitched, nasally voice, Cyrus gave them their orders: after four days of repair and resupply on Terra, they were to re-establish contact with Planet 2813, an outpost that had gone dark for six months. Solidius raised his hand to ask a question, but Cyrus angrily announced that there would be no questions. A new compliment of Mechanicum, under one Adept Brakkus, would be joining them.
Due to their poor past performance, the 231st would be overseen in this mission by Administrator Ahzek Toth, who would be recording everything that they did. As well, a space marine, brother Al-Rayyed Ad-Hib, would be travelling with them to accomplish his own mission. At that, the 8' Egyptian man in blue and gold power-armour emerged from the shadows where he had somehow been hiding. Cyrus asked if anybody had any questions. Nobody did, and with that, the briefing was over, and Cyrus left.
Magnus asked Ahzek if a renowned Administrator such as himself knew anything about Planet 2813, and with 8 degrees of success on Area Knowledge (Imperium) (after appropriate penalties for being down to a single planet), he recalled that it was the 13th planet conquered by the Emperor's Children space marine Legion and the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. It served as an important resupply depot and shipyard between Terra and Prospero, homeworld of the Thousand Sons Legion. The entire party got a baaaaaad feeling about this mission.
Turning to ask brother Al-Rayyed what his mission would be, so that they could assist, Magnus found that the space marine had disappeared again. Magnus managed to find him just as he boarded a shuttle up to their flagship, the Rogue Sniper, with Captain Lundgren, but brother Al-Rayyed declined to respond. As morale was critical in the wake of Horus' rebellion, Magnus gave a motivational speech to the troops (the "It's time to prove ourselves!" one, not the "You're all worthless maggots!" one), which seemed to raise spirits a bit.
Day 1: Deserters
The next morning, First Lieutenant Grisfield brought a report to Magnus that 56 soldiers had disappeared overnight. The no-shows were mostly split into two large groups that were known to hang out together, but there was also a lone soldier, Assistant Chef Daniel, who didn't belong to either. Meanwhile, Adept Brakkus brought Gizmoticus a report that just said he was doing a great job and to keep it up.
Magnus walked through camp until he found a soldier he recognized as a friend of many in "Deserter Group A", and kindly asked him to follow him to the interrogation room. The rest of the party waited behind one-way glass, and Gizmoticus fiddled with his homemade mind reading device while Magnus started the "interrogation". The soldier was cooperative, however, apparently swayed by the speech the night prior, and told him where his friends had gone: a church devoted to the Emperor, known as Bell's End.
Religion was outlawed in the Empire of Man, and the Emperor insisted that he was not a god, but this still was not enough to discourage people from worshipping him as such. Magnus thanked the soldier and dismissed him, while the rest of the team went to have breakfast ("Mechanic-O's! They're technically delicious!"). Magnus grabbed a soldier from "Group B", "Tightlipped" Thomas, and headed back into the interrogation room. Despite his nickname, Thomas was forthcoming enough, and, in exchange for the possibility of promotion to squad sergeant, revealed that the soldiers had gone to hang out with dissenters at a bar called the Over-Under in the slums.
In order to earn his promotion, Magnus said, Thomas would have to come with them to the slums to get his comrades back in line, and, begrudgingly, he agreed. The party grabbed their weapons and armour at the company armoury, and headed out to the Over-Under, which was built into the basement of a decrepit radio tower. A single thug guarded the door, though, as the walls were just corrugated tin, it wouldn't be hard to make a second door if necessary.
Solidius used his rifle's special x-ray scope to see inside, where he saw two humanoids waiting at a table. Gizmoticus saw a motion detector rigged up on the outside of the building, and tried but failed to assemble some sort of tool to disarm it. Magnus got tired of waiting and walked up to the guard, who threw something (probably drugs) into a flaming barrel, and then opened the door and walked away, sufficiently Intimidated.
The two guys inside had left, probably when the motion sensor went off, and likely gone down the single staircase in the floor. Solidius came down from his vantage point to look through the floor, and saw that there were a bunch of people below, all looking up, but he couldn't be sure if they were armed or not. Magnus walked slowly down the stairs, heavy footfalls breaking the silence, and the entire crowd turned to look at him. Gizmoticus got out his mind-reader, and got the impression that the soldiers were terrified that their commander had gotten wind of what they'd done.
Magnus pretended to ignore the Imperial soldiers, half still in uniform, and simply stated that some soldiers had come through here the night before, and had missed roll call that morning. While he didn't care what his men got up to on their own time, he expected them to show up on his time. If anybody happened to see them, perhaps they could send them on back to camp before the punishment would get worse. Gizmoticus took another mind-reading and found that Magnus' bit had worked, and told him as much over comms.
With that, Magnus pointed a finger gun at the jukebox and Solidius, recognizing the signal, shot it through the floor with his rifle. With a roar of thunder, the jukebox exploded, splattering molten metal over several people unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone. The party headed back to camp, and before the end of the day, all of the deserters showed back up.
Day 2: The Missing Assistant
Lt. Grisfield brought another report of missing men, though only 8 this time. While the party was getting ready to go after "Group A" at Bell's End, Chef Bronck came to speak with Magnus, concerned about Assistant Chef Daniel, who he viewed as almost a son. Daniel was a good kid, and had been under some sort of stress; he wouldn't desert normally. Gizmoticus used his mind reader and found that Daniel had been making Bronck feel vaguely uncomfortable for the last while. Magnus tried to get more intel out of Bronck, but the man knew nothing, so they headed to Daniel's bunk to look for clues.
Daniel's quarters looked unlived in, and were empty save for a locked safe, which Gizmoticus opened after running back to his chambers and grabbing an electronic lockpick. Inside was a journal filled with strange writings, which Magnus identified as probable dreams of a latent psyker discovering their psychic abilities. He tracked down the Fleet's Astropath and Navigator to see if they could help track down a latent psyker, but they couldn't do anything remotely. They could go out in the field, but didn't want to, and Magnus wasn't about to alienate such powerful allies for so little.
Feeling they were running out of time, Magnus ordered Solidius to track down Assistant Chef Daniel with Ahzek, while he and Gizmoticus would go to Bell's End to wrangle the soldiers there. Solidius started Tracking Daniel, using his psychic-tracking scope, only to be interrupted by Ahzek, who was apparently an expert on Psykers and, with 6 degrees of success on his own, higher Tracking, had already figured out exactly where Daniel had gone (8 miles south, on a cliff looking over the trash-filled dry ocean).
Solidius climbed into a sniper nest in case negotiations went south, while Ahzek approached the young man to try to convince him to come back with them. Daniel was forthcoming enough, and Ahzek tried his best (ie: not great) to be comforting; he was hearing voices, and thought that he was an abomination and disappointment to the Emperor. Ahzek, despite knowing that it was only a matter of time until an untrained psyker would be driven mad by their powers, tried to play it off as no big deal, and that Daniel could just come back and do his job like normal.
Daniel wasn't buying it, so Ahzek changed tact, saying that they could get him help from the Fleet's Astropath and Navigator. Apparently, he wasn't convincing, and Daniel said that he'd rather live out his days in the junk tenements on Terra, so that he wouldn't be a threat to his fellow soldiers. Ahzek regretted the waste of potential, but comm'd Solidius to take out the now rogue psyker. With a crack of thunder, Daniel fell to the ground in several large chunks. Though onlookers screamed in horror, Ahzek was just happy that no blood had landed on him.
The Secular Truth
Magnus and Gizmoticus arrived at Bell's End, fully armed and armoured, to find a large crowd gathered around a ramshackle building made of several colossal stone statues leaning into each other. As they strode towards the chapel, the crowd parted, and the two got a "good feeling" as they entered Bell's End, which was overlooked by a crude statue of the Emperor. Pamphlets of the Lectitio Divinitatus, the holy book of their new religion, were strewn around haphazardly.
Magnus found the soldiers easily enough, and they seemed pleased to see him there, clearly thinking he shared their beliefs. He started to berate them for abandoning their posts, but one man spoke up and said that they'd be returning before the Fleet left, but they would rather help the needy here while on leave. A short argument over the divinity of the Emperor proved fruitless ("Only the divine could deny his own divinity!" "Wow, that sure is a tautology"), and they clearly would not be swayed from their belief.
Though the soldiers were clearly not doing any harm, they were breaking Imperial Law by denying the Secular Truth, which decreed that worship of any kind was outlawed, and Magnus would not tolerate criminality in the ranks. He announced that they would serve "penance" for their piety in the form of half-rations and 10 lashes each once they returned to the Fleet. Though he didn't tell the soldiers, he would also inform the Terran authorities of the location of Bell's End, that it be torn down in accordance with the law.
The two halves of the party arrived back at camp simultaneously, and Magnus asked Administrator Ahzek how it had gone. Ahzek replied that "He didn't make it", and Magnus welcomed him to the Two-Thirty-Worst, as he was truly one of them now. Before going to sleep, Magnus found Chef Bronck and lied to him, saying that Daniel was getting help, but that he'd had to depart immediately.
Day 3: Big Malley
Thankfully, no more troops disappeared overnight. Magnus ordered a friend of "Group C", a tearful soldier named Vicky, into the interrogation chamber and found out that the group, which included her sister, had gotten into a fight with some toughs at a bar in the slums, but she'd ran away instead. Magnus told Vicky they were going to track her friends down, and she was going to lead them to the bar. He asked Solidius how Ahzek had done at tracking yesterday, and Solidius responded that "it ended in a kill, so good".
Sadly, Vicky was pretty distressed and, despite a Leadership roll from Magnus, took most of the day just to find the bar where the fight had broken out. There were no clear clues or tracks outside, so Magnus, still wearing his carapace armour and holstered bolt pistol walked into the bar, which turned silent. He announced that anyone who had information regarding the scuffle two nights prior had best come forward, and when a scraggly, toothless old man asked what the pay was, replied that they would receive the eternal favour of the Imperium, as well as their life.
The old man was sufficiently cowed, and said it was men working for Big Malley, a small-time crime lord in the east side of the slums. As the party left, somebody in the crowded bar shanked the old man, and his lifeless body fell to the floor. Gizmoticus panicked, and ran out of the bar. Magnus drew his pistol, fired a round into the ceiling, and yelled that either the patrons would tell him who had killed the old man, or every person in the bar would die by his hand. Sensing imminent violence, Solidius opened his duffel bag and retrieved his rifle.
The entire crowd pointed to a trio of toughs, one wearing an eyepatch, another two eyepatches, who complained about being ratted out and reached for their guns. Before they could draw, Magnus killed one with a pair of bolt rounds to the chest, the ensuing ribcage shrapnel killing a bystander, while Solidius ricocheted a single bullet such that it killed the other two. With nobody alive to question, and no clues on the bodies, the party headed out for the east side, hoping they'd luck out and find Big Malley's.
Ahzek knew a surprising amount about the drug Malley sold, a tranquilliser drug called "Qash", and was able to track down the gang's hideout, a single-story tin shack, with 11 degrees on Tracking. Out front, six thugs were hanging out around a flaming barrel. Magnus told the others to cover him and walked up to the thugs, pistol drawn, and asked if there were imperial soldiers in the building, which for some reason startled them into going for their own guns.
Ahzek and Gizmoticus sprinted off into the slums, and when Magnus yelled for cover fire from Vicky, she timidly shouted that she hadn't brought a gun. Magnus opened fire with his bolt pistol, killing one thug and stunning two others with the following explosion, and a shot from Solidius removed another's head from his shoulders. One of the remaining thugs managed to Fast-Draw his pistol, but missed, while the others either failed or recovered from stun.
Magnus continued forwards and killed the man who'd shot at him with another pair of rounds, and Solidius killed the other thug with a ready gun. Two men appeared in the windows of the building, and one of the thugs had recovered from stun but crit-failed Fast-Draw and dropped his gun instead. Magnus All-Out Attacked, killing the one who hadn't dropped his gun, and made it into cover behind the flaming barrel. Solidius took out one of the newcomers in the windows, but the other one readied a grenade launcher.
The last thug outside bent over and picked up his gun, but died when Magnus emptied his magazine into him, the shrapnel bouncing off his armour. Solidius headshot the man with the grenade launcher, and they regrouped in front of the blood-splattered shack. Vicky picked up one of the dead men's pistols while Solidius scanned the building with his x-ray scope and found what was probably the eight soldiers sitting on the ground in the main room, as well as two other men with weapons ready hiding in the far corners and facing the door.
Magnus kicked down the front door with Forced Entry (though he had to use Luck) and found the soldiers, tied up as hostages, though the other two men were not in the main room. He moved in slowly, and covered Vicky while she checked the soldiers. Two had died, which meant that Magnus was taking no prisoners. Vicky was ordered to carry the soldiers outside and radio for pickup, when Solidius noticed one of the men in the back moving, maybe out a window.
Unfortunately for him, the walls of the shack were thin, and Solidius shot him dead before he could get away. The other man called out that he was surrendering and dropped his gun, so Magnus rounded the corner and put two bolt rounds into his skull. Evac showed up shortly, and the party flew back to camp.
Notes:
Every character was given 10 extra character points to fill in any missing gaps.
Bonus points if you recognized that Solidius Anguis is bastardized Latin for "Solid Snake".
The players came up with a reason for the 231st's bad reputation: they do their job fine, but every time they do, some space marines show up and claim to have done everything. No matter how hard they try or how much they do, their achievements are always stolen.
Ahzek didn't use his Luck when failing to convince Assistant Chef Daniel, because he figured he'd need it for combat, forgetting that he had Cowardice and would just run away uncontrollably anyway.
Solidius' effective Guns (Rifle) skill is 31 if he uses his gun's scope.
We only realized that we hadn't armed Vicky when it was way too late. Magnus is Paranoid, and walks around fully-armed pretty much everywhere, and Solidius never loses sight of his rifle, so they didn't even think about going to the armoury.
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