41K RPG : Into the Eye.

[Cynical Cat]

"So that was an eldar," said Gix. "Interesting." The inquisitor's mind was replaying the battle, looking for hints of strength and weakness. The xenos had been a formidable opponent, but Gix beaten powerful psykers before and he planned to do so again.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

She nodded, and began ordering the nearby troops to withdraw and hunt for the portal, checking, now and then, for approval.

[SirNitram]

"An Eldar." Malkamar rumbled. He had, while the Inquisitors fought on planes of reality he knew not, managed to strip enough of the holed Rhino to get the others to run. There were many things a Techmarine could do, but the size of the hole in one was apparently beyond him.

"I can see no way that bodes well for us. Between their blasted means of flitting hither and tither and their mad ways, it'll end in tears." Not his, though. An Eldar attack almost always foreshadowed something. Often, lots more Eldar. But it would be combat and glory. "These gates. Are they within the realms of the mortal gaze?" Clearly, the Marine was eyeing the pathway down.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Jaenta frowned, "I've heard tales of people surviving the Eldar road, but I don't think it wise. A Primarch disappaeared into it once..."

[Josh]

"A feckless flight into their witching path is not advisable," he said. The former commissar, it would seem, had learned restraint somewhere long the way.

"Pater, Jolan, we must examine all aspects of the contact. Eldar are labrythine creatures, given to exceedingly long-term planning."

As in, this little encounter could have been setting the stage for something centuries hence. So it was, when dealing with the long-lived xenos.

[Cynical Cat]

"I'm more familiar with heretical that xenos workings," replied Gix "I think it would be better if Inquisitor Novum took the lead with his greater expertise."

[SirNitram]

"Who spoke of entering such madness? I'd sooner cut off my own arm again." Malkamar shook his head. "Find the thing and lace it with enough Promethium to melt any Xeno construction. It's a Xeno supply line into a major Imperium world, we can't simply let such continue to exist. As much as knowing of the technology to flit so would be nice, it is a threat."

[Pcm979]

"We'll be sure to take that into consideration, Exiled Tech-Captain Malkamar." Pater stressed the Superhuman's title slightly. "If I find myself in need of an assault against a fortified position, I shall defer to your expertise. In the meantime..." He said pointedly.

[Josh]

He looked to Pater. "I have a squad of Deathwatch awaiting word," he said. "We can either locate and prosecute, or..." With a glance toward Jolan. "Be subtle."

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Melda took in the conversation as the various soroitas squads reported that they were moving into the area described. It seemed that the xeno had last been detected in the basement of a curate's building attending one of the great churches, and they were busily smashing their way into the building as she spoke...

"Sirs, my women are searching the area. They report finding a body of a curate so far Lords."

[Pcm979]

Pater nodded. He had questions about the curate, but they could wait for an official Arbites report, or the Ophilian equivalent.

"Take me there." He ordered, summoning Gyllia and Anghel to his side with a thought.

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Less than an hour later, the Servo-Skulls were circling the Xenos artifact, scanning and storing information in all available mediums, including Psychic. When collated later, the data would, with the use of an Adraxian-pattern Hologenerator, produce an exact replica of the 'Gate. Exact apart from in one respect, that is.

Pater opened his mind to the Warp and touched the artifact, recieving and recording psychic sensations and impressions. They meant little now, but later, after he had some time to parse the data, they could provide more useful than the hologram ever would.

He stepped back, finished, and turned to the Sororitas.

"Destroy it." He confirmed with a nod.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The graceful wraithbone construct had half a dozen meltabombs attached, and the observers, apart from a tarantula sentry gun, were pulled back out of the building. There was a loud hiss and pict-relays showed the object melt, before the wave of heat melted them too. A warp-thunderclap followed as part of the webway was destroyed with it, dumped back into the immaterium.

[Pcm979]

"Byron."

"Yes, m'Lord?"

Pater's Rhino sped back towards the Inquisitors and the Saint.

"Crosscheck Ophilia's history. Anything unusual, Eldar especially. I want to know what their stake in this affair is."

"At once, m'Lord."

[Cynical Cat]

Gix smiled to hear Prius Ristani use the word "subtle". Things had indeed changed. Ristani considering restraint, Jolan Gix with a huge trail of corpses hidden and buried behind him. The Eldar involvement was curious. Hopefully Lena would be able to shed some light on it.

[Pcm979]

And Pater... The formerly gung-ho, somewhat rash Interrogator had discarded pieces of himself over the decades, becoming cold, clinical and calculating to a fault.

[Cynical Cat]

"Go," Jolan ordered the driver as he sat back down. A thousand balls were been juggled in the air by the Imperium of Man. Maniacally Puritans and demented Radicals waging their own wars in the Inquisition, the Ecclesiarchy grasing for power, the Adeptus Mechanicus unwavering in their quest to control all technology, the Imperial Commanders who thought of nothing more than proping up the status quo in an Imperium under seige, ambitious officers with dreams of empire, and people like him who might wound the Imperium while trying to save it. People like him who realized that forces threatening the future of mankind could not be oppossed without recourse to unconventional methods. People like him who walked a knife's edge above a precipice with failure on one side and heresy and damnation on the other.

[Pcm979]

Pater reclined in one of the Rhino's seats, closing his natural eye but keeping his artificial one active. Locating and fighting the Eldar had been draining, inspecting the artifact merely compounding his psychic weariness. He began repairing his mental and physical bodies, subtly weaving the warp around himself to regenerate ruptured tissues and damaged mental defenses. He looked almost like a statue, brooding in the corner, dim blue light shining from his optic.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The Saint's residence was much like the surrounding buildings, though as a sororities building, it was also heavily fortified. Atop a hill, however, its lofty spires and crenellated turrets overlooked more of the city planet than most other buildings. Crowds of pilgrims lurked outside, as they did outside many of the more prominent buildings on Ophelia.

The rhinos drove to high doors of adamantium, in which a sally port opened to admit them, guarded by black robed and armoured Soroitas bearing fearsome looking shock-halberds and electro-flails to keep zealous pilgrims out of the grounds. They had in the past, borne power weapons, but those were now left in the fortress’ many armouries for routine duties.

The remnant of the column ground up the gravelled pathways as the portal ground shut behind them and the rhinos headed into garages. Byron’s search turned up surprisingly little. The Ophelia system had been chosen to become cardinal worlds because of its distance from the Eye of Terror, and unsurprisingly, as known to the Great of the Imperium, this was once the heart of Eldar civilisation, it had never had reported contact with the elusive aliens, until the present, anyway.

The rhinos halted at the doorway of the Keep itself, a high portal built into the wall of the inner-fortress eighty feet above the ground, reachable only by a narrow stair that hugged the wall, below portals for bolter fire and the dropping of grenades. Occasional cracks in the stairs attested that this had been put to the test now and then during times of civil disturbance.

The group were incited to ascend the stairs and enter what turned out to be a surprisingly opulent interior, with a grand reception hall of red velvet with the sweet smell of incense hanging in the air below a ceiling of blue-black and white with gold lettering describing the galactic scale of the Empire of Mankind. Cunningly hidden bolter-loopholes and gas-dispensers showed the same fastidious commitment to security as the exterior of the fortress. What was harder to see was a complex system of super-heating Webbers that could cover any intruder of group of intruders in boiling web-material.

The Inquisitors and their companions were offered rooms, and Lena added that preparations would need to be made before she could explain, and that she planned to be ready to speak with them by the evening, though she had no explanation of the Eldar attack, or at least, she spoke of none.

[Pcm979]

Pater's rooms were sumptuously upholstered in deep crimson, with gigantic beds and couches lying atop a carpet so thick one almost had to wade though it. A quick security sweep later, they were arranged in the living room, which was large enough to comfortably house the Rhino they had arrived in. They were all given their assignments; Try to get the Concorde moved closer to their lodgings, see about getting their weapons and equipment on-site, scout the building for entrances, exits, weak points and defensible zones. Routine work.

Afterwards, Pater sank back into his chosen seat, the least-padded and highest-backed one in the room, and flicked through the servo-skull TacNet. The waiting was the most difficult part, the anticipation. Waiting for results from a tortured captive, waiting for a distant battle or sting operation to conclude, and the constant, background anticipation of the next attempt on his life.

Joritu approached him and sighed, her almost normal-looking bionic eyes rapidly changing colour as she cycled through all forms of the visible and non-visible spectrum. "You're running yourself down." She said, annoyed.

He looked up slowly, organic eye rolling back into position from the off-kilter angle it invariably assumed when he was accessing the TacNet.

"Joritu, it is your job to attend to my health." he replied, not unkindly. "However, if I wish to be constantly hovered over, I will assign a Servo-Skull the task. I am well within operational parametres, I assure you."

Flushing slightly from the quiet rebuke, she nevertheless drove her point home with determination.

"No, you're not." She insisted, staring down a man a full foot taller and several wider than her, with the power to snap her neck with a thought.

"Two weeks ago you battled a Norn Queen mind-to-mind. You still haven’t fully recovered from that. Now you take on an Eldar psyker and read a Warp Gate? You need far more than ten minutes of meditation to be ‘well within operational parametres’ after that."

He steepled his fingers and looked at her. "At the appropriate juncture, I will submit to a full bioscan and treatment, but that time is not now. The Saint will be calling on us in a few hours."

"Exactly!" She finished triumphantly. "A few hours you can use to recuperate properly. As your personal physician, I strongly recommend you do so. We" she gestured widely, indicating the other members of Pater's retinue despite their absence from the room, "can easily deal with things until then. You are not gaining anything flicking through the TacNet for hours on end."

Pater stood, towering over the girl. "Very well, Joritu. An hour. No more, no less."

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Gyllia retracted her Mechadentrides from the cogitator stand embedded in the wall, and turned in time to see the tiny girl browbeat the massive Inquisitor into taking a break.

"She's hopelessly in love with him, you know." Anghel muttered, his impossibly thin, exoskeleton-clad frame bent over requisition and authorization forms.

"I know." She said grimly, a bitter taste in her mouth. "That’s why she's so good at her job. Now, 'port security wants a copy of blue form #743..."

[Cynical Cat]

"Troubling," said Jolan.

"We've gone against eldar before," replied Hethor. The big man was leading up against a wall.

"Dark eldar, not psykers. This one was strong and skilled. He couldn't take Pater and I together, but damn he was good. If it was a he." Jolan leaned back. "Thoughts?"

"Too soon," replied Lydia. "The saint will provide us with more data with which to make informed conjucture." The others nodded.

"Agreed," Jolan sighed. "Now for the others."

"Where do we start?" asked Hethor. "You're carryin' a heavily load of secrets boss and they're professional snoops. They'll be asking back."

"Pater," replied Jolan. "Our issues aside, he's had time to grow into the job. And I have specific questions for him anyway. I suspect his specialty has made him flexible about certain matters."

"You sure boss?" Hethor asked.

"As sure as I am that the reports on the Tyranids I have access to are heavily edited."

The room when dead quiet. "Rape me with a fuckin' chainsword," cursed Hethor. "I didn't need to hear that." The big veteran wasn't stupid. He knew what that meant. Something worse than what they would let an oridnary inquisitor know.

"I do and I need to hear the truth. Pater knows that truth. Time to pay a call on my colleage. Alone."

[Josh]

A half ton of Inquisitor does not make his way about subtly.

At least not within his body. However, freed of the constraints of flesh, Prius Ristani ghosted through the halls of the fortress. It was a talent that none in his employ knew that he possessed, one that he did not advertise. A secret weapon.

Pater would pursue the actual xenos themselves. Jolan would concern himself with... the oblique angles. While Prius would check and confirm any information the other Inquisitors presented, he concerned himself with internal security. The Eldar were a sly and manipulative breed, often utilizing the weak and unwary as pawns in their games. With a light and surprising grace his mind flitted about into the areas it could reach, charting and defining their surroundings while tasting of the residents therein, collating information and filing it away in his nigh-infallible augmetically-enhanced memory.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Over time, the numer of people inside the keep began to dwindle. Battle Sisters left their posts to double the guard on the outer wall, servants and other flunkies were sent on errands or simply told to take time off. There were indeed signs to be found of secrets within the building, as one would expect. Places where the walls just didn't marry up right, that might conceal hidden stairways or passages or even lifts, and gaps between one floor and the one below, where rooms might be concealed.

In one such room, one Lena had taken the liberty of removing from those permitted to be used by the fortress's defenders when she had taken control of it, and had seemingly taken the further liberty of having walled up completely, something moved. A female figure ghosted between vertical cupboards of steel, seemingly sealed completely, until she found what she was looking for. A thin, dust covered whistle.

Raising it to her lips, Lena gave a short blast, producing a sound outside of the range of normal human hearing. From inside the nearest boxes, the sounds of metal upon metal could be heard as inhabitants began moving once more.

[Pcm979]

If Prius brushed his mental tendrils past Pater's quarters, he would discover that the Inquisitor had activated a large amount of Psi-dampners, including Lillith's Pariah field. Pater had taken his experience with the Eldar to heart.

Precisely an hour later, he lurched upright, hyperventilating as his enforced recuperation cycle came to an end. Part of him fairly screamed for information, data: Where? Who? How? Why? The rest of him struggled to feed his half-concious hunger, but it wasn't fast enough, and he desperately extended his mind, searching for what he needed to know-

"Sir?" A strong, metallic hand grabbed his chin and jerked it down sharply. Joritu's face swam into view. "Focus, my Lord. Deep breaths." She spoke assuredly, and he managed to find himself, redraw the mask around his psyche.

"Thank you, Joritu." He let her disentangle a series of leads from hardpoints buried into his chest and bundle them back into her diagnostic equipment. "I trust this alleviates your concerns?"

"Somewhat, my Lord. Inquisitor Gix wishes an audience with you." She replied quickly.

"Send him in, then." Pater got up from the bed and rebuttoned his shirt as the girl left the room. "Oh, Joritu?"

"Yes, my Lord?"

"It's been over a decade. I think we're on a first-name basis by now." He favoured her with an all too rare smile of amusement.

"Of course, my Lord." The girl rushed out.

[Cynical Cat]

Jolan entered. "Hello Pater. I was hoping to get in a conversaton before we engaged the enemies of the Emperor in psychic combat, but that was not our fate." He put a flask down on a table. "Gard came up with this." A slip of paper came next. "It actually tastes pretty good, that's because of the fruit, but its formulated to help get you back on your feet after exhaustion from using your abilities."

[Pcm979]

"Jolan." Pater replied evenly. "Have one of these hideously over-furnished seats." He gestured and sat down himself. He took the bottle and the slip of paper with polite interest.

"Thank you. I'm sure it will be useful." He didn't drink from the flask, whether because he didn't want to risk it, or it simply didn't occur to him that it would be polite to do so. He steepled his fingers and peered at Gix over them.

"So, what topics of conversation bring you here? Specifically." Small talk was not the Inquisitor's style.