41K RPG : Into the Eye.

[Cynical Cat]

Lydia paced the room. Her right hand, her primary gun hand, twitched. "I should be with him."

"No, you shouldn't," replied Hethor D'eckor from where he was leaning. "He was right to go solo."

"I'm his interrogator. I should be in on this, at least to learn if nothing else."

"Hot shot, sit down and button it." She glared at him. "You don't know the players. None of us need to be there. He's got to talk them around to his game plan, which is a delicate fuckin' act with these two. Pater and him have history and it isn't that good. There was a big dispute between them and Pater ran his mouth about Sever when he started losing it, which ran up the heat and the boss shot back. The boss won, like always. So there's that and then there's the whole Wager business."

"Really?" asked Gard. The scholar looked up from the plate of pastries. "He was involved in that?'

"Yeah," said Hethor. "And in a way that was fuckin' clueless. Fuckin' blue bloods. Now he goes to Pater with me and he knows me as one of Gix's trigger pullers so that isn't calm things down, is it? Pater likes tech so if he goes with Melina and he even thinks he's been phermed, even if she doesn't do it, and it will jack up the temp. So she's out. Keys he doesn't know and he's another trigger puller so he's out. You ooze trigger puller hot shot and that isn't going to do anything good. So if he wants things to run smooth, he's got to do it solo at first.

"As for that fuckin' mother rapin', ork spawned, commissar he's another fuckin' problem entirely. Delicate, like unstable explosives. And he's a rapin' inquisitor now. The boss man don't need extra problems now."

"Alright," said Lydia. "But I should be his right hand."

Hethor snorted. "No one was ever his right hand, not even Sever. We're his agents and his friends, but there's always a space." His eyes shifted to Melina for a moment. "He carries the heaviest part alone. Always. But he knows we'll be where we should be, backing his play and doing our part. And it works. So do your part and so will the rest of us. But this play is solo."

"I wonder what considerations he has made for his death," Gard mused. "He must have made provisions for his death in service."

Hethor shrugged. "It's not like I'll be around to see it, things being the way they are. He's done somthin' tricky, you can bet on that. The only part I'm sure of is that whatever maggot finally brings him down will have Maladar to worry about." He ignored Lydia's flinch and downed a shot of amber liquid. "This is some good shit," he said refilling the glass. "You should try it."

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The android, christened Marvin, entered and relayed the same message again, taking note of both inquisitors being in the same room.

[Bratty]

Zala made her way through the fortress, keeping to the sides of the man made walls. This place is enormous. Rather than that, it is cold with no warmth to the hearths. Why would anyone wish to reside here?

What others consider comforts, Zala considers unnecessary, and suddenly desires the ship that moves in the sky. At least the ship had a fire that propelled it, so the fire was within, moving them like pieces on a chess board, into position, closer and closer to removing the true enemies of Yar. The thought is only a flicker as her singular purpose is in front of her.

She turns a corner, keeping an eye out for any who would reside her, but also seeming fairly casual. Like she is supposed to be here.

Deeper, and deeper into the belly of the stone beast.

She clicks into a code that was taught to her by Prius, something he calls "Morse", an old and ancient method of commicae..

"Im in. End contact"

That's it. The umbilical cord is cut. She will not activate the vox again until she has something to report.

[Josh]

"Shortly," he said after the sarcastic robot departed. "I would take that to mean 'as soon as possible', then. Shall we?"

He gestured for Jolan to proceed, showing no visible response to the report he'd just received. She needed no answer; when either of them needed to talk, they'd 'talk' via their click-code.

[Cynical Cat]

"Of course," Jolan replied. "I'll be a moment with my people." Jolan quickly strode to his rooms. Everyone looked at him as he came in.

"The big meeting is happening. I should know something soon. Hethor, don't mess with Ristani. He's an inquisitor now and he's a lot sharper."

The big guardsman growled and then nodded. "My lord-," Lydia began. He looked at her.

"Jolan," she began again. "I should be attending."

"No. Too much tension as is. Let me or Ristani settle it down." He met Hethor's incredoulous gaze. "Yes Ristani. I'll fill you in when I'm done." And then he left.

[Josh]

He proceeded along the way that Marvin had indicated, all his senses alert, augmetic and mystic. There was no such thing as safe ground, after all. And like Pater, he found the notion of the Iron Men being the sole defense of the place to be somewhat unsettling. Had they worked their influence upon Lena?

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The war room that was indicated was high, built in a circle, with a circular table engraved with a tremendous map of the Imperium, over which, taken from Vonrilyental's former base on Adraxis, hung an incredibly detailed hologram of the Imperium in all its glory. Various chairs were scattered about, and Lena and the female inquisitor were busily standing by the Eastern Fringe discussing something in ernest, apparently oblivious to the newcomers.

[Pcm979]

Pater took a seat, attended by a trio of servo-skulls. If one of them was Byron, it was impossible to tell.

[Josh]

Prius remained standing. One never knew if the local furniture was up to handling his mass, and it was beneath an Inquisitor's dignity to collapse a chair and fall on his regal backside.

[Cynical Cat]

Jolan nodded to his colleages and quietly took a seat.

[Cynical Cat]

Jolan telekinetically shuffled a deck of the Emperor's Tarot in the air, the cards expanding outwards to form a sphere before collapsing inward and assembling themselves into a deck. A soft golden glow surrounded the cards as the inquisitor reshuffled them again.

[Pcm979]

Pater sank back into his seat, rested his elbows on the arm supports, steepled his fingers and simply stopped moving. He didn't even appear to be breathing.

[SirNitram]

The inquisitors were plotting. The Techmarine was cracking open crates and restoring equipment to operational levels. He hummed as he did, an old hymn to the Primarchs for their blessings upon him on a day bereft of battle. The first were his boltguns, twin weapons considered the most holy of the Astartes, an extension of his form and his soul. The artificer armour with it's heavy servo harness was in peices; it would be next.

Eldar. It had to be them, hadn't it? They had always been the habringers; before any great occourance, Eldar would appear, without any apparent sense or logic, but with a devotion and purpose they alone knew and which they would not abandon. Mad creatures, yet at the same time, driven.

If the pattern continued, the rising crescendo would be coming soon. And why should it change now? This woman had gathered a cadre of Inquisitors together; that was sure to cause events to accelerate, if not be born of the whole cloth.

That left two things that Tech-Captain Malkamar knew. One, by the end, the forces of Chaos and the Greenskins would be in on this. Like animals to meat, they were.

And that he would be drawn into it. May the Emperor and His Primarchs aid him. The God-Emperor's wisdom had led him this far, through endless strange times and dangerous encounters. Surely there was a point.

[Cynical Cat]

There was a knock at Tech-Captain Malkamar's door. Hethor D'eckor stood nervously outside. He hoped he wasn't fucking anything up.

[SirNitram]

A gentle sigh came from the heavily augmented giant, and the door opened a moment later. One of the Bolters hung in an oversized holster at his side now; the other was clearly in the middle of being stripped and cleaned.

"What do the Inquisitors require?" He asked simply, arms folded and head to one side.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Jaenta waited until at last, she received confirmation of the fortress’ security, and closed the room’s doors, before returning to her seat. “Inquisitors,â€Â

[Pcm979]

Pater inclined his head slightly, but made no other movement or sound.

[Josh]

Even decades-removed, even with his dealings with the hive fleets and their splinters, the image still took him back, back to a deep, primal place.

Back to the memories of a six-year-old boy who watched from the field where the shuttles were being loaded, as the horde overwhelmed the defenses of his home hive, on a world whose name he never even bothered thinking about anymore.

The horde had swallowed his family, leaving him an orphan and a candidate for the Schola Progenium that had molded a lost child into a ruthless commissar.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Quite well."

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

"This is of course, the Lictor Vangard organism. This particular specimen was captured several years ago." She tapped the control again, advancing the looped image, revealing the creature being floored by Adraxian gravitic guns, "I was part of the Ordo Xenos group responsible for experimenting on it. We worked on its synapse-brain, with the objective of learning how it draws in the hive fleets in order to supress this function... It didn't really work as planned," the picture advanced to show an inquisitorial space station being swarmed by a dozen Tyranid vesses...

[Josh]

The man-machine inquisitor leaned forward, observing with interest.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

"The effect of enhancing the synapse-brain in this manner, magnifying their effects, is needless to say, something that I think could have potential uses... As you know, there are evils out there, that the Imperium could use this particular ability on...

"I'm confident that we have a new weapon against the Tyranids, and in the process, our other enemies..."

[Cynical Cat]

"Interesting," said Gix. "Pray continue. I have some ideas of my own regarding possible applications of signals emitted Lictors and genestealer broods."

[Cynical Cat]

Hethor bowed to the Astartes. He was a big man, not quite space marine big, with olive skin and the insignia of the Dark Angels tattooed on the forhead of his shaven skull. "The inquisitors have no reguests at the moment, Tech-Captain. I have come to offer assistance, if you need any."

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

She nodded, "I repeated the experiment with another Lictor restrained in a deep space pod, a hundred parsecs away. The ships followed it, even into the middle of nowhere...

"I think that with enough refinement, we could divert main thrusts of Tyranid advance... They have been known to congregate, if the draw is strong enough, see Macragge..."

[Cynical Cat]

"Yes," said Gix. "I was thinking of using deathworlds unsuitable for human habitation as traps. Hive ships descend to feed on useless jungle and cyclonic torpedoe warheads detonate. I take it that you're thinking of something a little different."