41K RPG : Into the Eye

[Caz]

Théo rested idly in her quarters as the ship made the warp jump. Fortunately, the Void shields and the Gellar fields made the effect on the ship's passenger's next to nothing.

Warp travel was a funny concept to the Terran, although she'd known of its existence long ago. She just considered it odd due to the negative connotations that even the word "warp" had brought back on her home planet. Like when her first tutor had stumbled upon the girl attempting to create her own light to read by, before her parents had let her talents be known.

That child is touched by the Warp...!

[Pcm979]

An hour later, a Servo-Skull directed her to the conference room, which was dominated by a mahogany table. The group was clustered around it informally, standing or sitting as they preferred. Pater was briefly bent over some dataslates with a man dressed in the garb of the Navis Nobilitae, the secretive Navigator sub-species of Humanity. He eventually waved the man away.

[Caz]

She entered the room quietly, but with alert eyes. Despite herself, her eyes wandered over the room's occupants with curiosity as she took a chair. The visor had been replaced, but with her hair down, there was a striking difference in her appearance, and her posture seemed a bit less rigid.

[Pcm979]

Pater sat at the head of the table, dressed in a ship's bodyglove and a loose cloak. He was wearing a different faceplate and arm, slightly less bulky without the complicated field gear. Sitting down along the table were the rake-thin Sage, Joritu, augmetic lungs hissing quietly, and Lillith. Standing were Gyllia, mechadendrites waving slowly and Deuce, slouched against a wall. Pater began outlining the Saint's radical plan to lead the Tyranids into the Eye.

He finished some time later. "Are there any questions?" He asked impassively.

[Caz]

As Théo listened to the plan, she became increasingly aware that Tyran Ronathal must have had fa rmore confidence in her abilities than she'd previously expected. If his idea of a good first combat experience was journeying into the Eye...

As he paused for questions, she raised her head and cleared her throat a bit.

"When would the operation be commencing, sir?"

[Pcm979]

"As soon as we assemble at the rendezvous point, I am led to believe." He said, and briefly outlined their requirement for a large number of Lictors.

[Caz]

She nodded, then remained silent for the remainder of the briefing, listening with an intense air about her that hadn't been present before.

[Pcm979]

The briefing wrapped up relatively quickly, a few scattered questions about logistics and supplies being asked by Anghel and Gyllia. The meeting broke up, with the crewmembers drifting off. It was going to be a long trip. Deuce and Anghel walked over to a corner table and resumed a Regicide game they'd apparently been playing for quite some time, and Joritu briefly fussed over the Inquisitor's health. It would be obvious to someone as observant as Théo that she had a massive case of hero worship.

[Caz]

Théo waited for the young woman to finish her mothering of the Inquisitor before turning to her, clearing her throat a bit.

"Might I have you take a look at something?" Théo asked, making sure that Novum knew she was taking care of business, as she hadn't planned on saying anything at all until the irritation around the collar of her robes became a bit too much to sit through without some discomfort.

[Pcm979]

Joritu turned to the Interrogator, for once finding someone on the ship who was smaller than her.

"Of course." She said, medical equipment folding back into slots in her augmetic arms.

[Cynical Cat]

There was a buzz at Jolan's door. "Enter," he said. The door slid open and Melina glided in. The tall woman was wearing a maroon armoured bodyglove. A slender pistol rode at her hip.

Jolan's quarters were decorated with an eye to simple comfort. The walls were lined with his weapon case and armour glass secoured bookshelves. Gix himself was wasring a red silk shirt and black pants. "Melina. A pleasure to see you. And armed."

"If I am going into a place where my skills as a warrior will be necessary, then I should get into the habit of thinking that way."

"It looks good on you," he said admiringly.

"Thank you." She twirled around. "I'm still vain enough to enjoy hearing that. Both Hethor and Keys agree that I'm a fair shot. I won't be a liability to you."

"You've never been a liability. And its alright that you're nervous. This is ludicrously risky venture, for a variety of reasons, and we are now committed to it."

"We are with you. All of us. As always."

"No matter what I have done or what I will do?"

"We have faith in you. The God-Emperor could not hope for a more able servant. Or a better man."

"I'm an inquisitor. I'm a terrible man."

"No, you're such a good man that even being an inquisitor can extinguish it. Thank you, for that." She closed the distance between them. Her face was just centimeters from him. The heady combination of her perfume and her phermones filled his nostrils.

"Melina-," he began.

"Shush," she said, placing her finger over his lips. "Don't say anything. This is a gift and you will accept it with grace."

"What abou-"

"Don't worry about that. This isn't about him. Or our relationship. This is about us. She removed her finger and leaned slightly and their lips touched. And there were no more words.

[Pcm979]

Joritu turned to the Interrogator, for once finding someone on the ship who was smaller than her.

"Of course." She said, medical equipment folding back into slots in her augmetic arms.

The woman smiled--or at least the closest thing to a smile that Cantor was accustomed to--and tugged down the collar of her robes, revealing the discolouration due to the deep bruises left over time by the inhibitor collar.

Joritu brushed her hood back revealing shoulder length dirty-red hair and blue-grey eyes overlaid with blood red augmetic lenses. She leaned over and clucked, gently prodding the site with a talon.

"An inhibitor collar?" She asked, drawing a little blood into a hypodermic set in her fingertip. "You must've been wearing it for quite some time." Her accent was primarily eastern-rim provincial, with an overlay of the more upperclass accent Pater's crew had adopted.

She didn't wince as the blood was drawn, and in response to the comment, she affirmed: "Yes. About six years."

"It's affected your posture." Joritu commented, another syringe hissing from her fingertips. "This should help with the bruising and inflammation." She said, injecting the mixture.

This time, her smile wasn't entirely unfriendly. "Yes," she said, "I suppose it would."

She hadn't really considered that before, the lasting effects. There was just a bit of anxiety in the back of her mind that reminded her that might not be the only side effect to having it removed. But she kept her mind from such subjects.

"Thank you," she said to Joritu, again appearing far older than her face would appear.

"Just a moment." Joritu said, wrapping a cold, sharp hand around Théo's chin. "I'm going to adjust your neck." She explained, probing with another hand. "It will feel somewhat... Unnerving." She said, then quickly twisted Theo's head to the side, the bones realigning with an audible crack.

The visor she wore darkened in anticipation, to hide the girl's reaction. It ended up being a grunt of what could have been surprise but really wasn't pain. She rolled her shoulders after a moment.

"Unnerving..." She repeated. "Yes."

Joritu chuckled, an odd sound when backed by the hissing of her lungs. "You may feel disoriented for a while." She continued, assessing the intense girl quickly. "There's no harm in taking it easy. It's going to be a fairly long journey."

"Oh?" the woman asked, the visor becoming almost transparent. She hardly took it off in the view of anyone unless attempting to persuade them, and so it retained a bit of reflectability in order to placate whomever she was speaking to.

"As I understand it." Joritu shrugged, pulling her hands back into the recesses of her robes. "Ophilia is hardly in Tyranid-heavy territory, after all."

"You'll have to forgive my lack of knowledge on these matters, sir," Théo addressed Pater from across the table. "The Schola doesn't follow wartime affairs or politics to filter in. Interruption of studies, you know," she said with a sigh. She'd been told by an instructor that things were once different, but how different she'd never know.

Turning back to the woman, she allowed a thin line of white teeth to show as she smiled and nodded in thanks. "I can feel it working already," she said appreciatively.

Joritu bowed slightly. "It's both my duty and a pleasure." She demurred.

[Pcm979]

Pater looked up from the stack of dataslates he'd been handed by the Navigator. "Joritu, perhaps you should show the Interrogator our librarium." He said mildly.

Joritu took the hint, blushing slightly. He didn't want to be disturbed at the moment. She stood again, robes parting slightly to reveal two holster-like contraptions supporting her heavy metal arms.

"This way, if you please." She said.

Théo stood, gave a cordial nod to Inquisitor Novum as she exited the room. Almost the moment after the door irised closed behind them, Théo let out a bit of a sigh.

"So my first taste of real combat is to be inside the Eye of Terror," she said in a quiet voice.

"We won't be that lucky." Joritu said wryly. "After all, our plan will be going well if we end up with all the Tyranids in the galaxy chasing us."

"Good," she said as they walked, shoulders relaxing a bit. "Hope to get at least some experience in before then..."

She pondered whether or not this type of conversation was apropos for the moment, then decided she honestly didn't care. Tyran had mentioned nothing of his intent to do this, so she had a right to be surprised.

"You must feel thrown in off the deep end." Joritu sympathised, leading the way easily.

"Yes," she said, "that's one way to put it."

They walked in silence for a long few moments, then Cantor asserted: "But I learned more under Lord Ronathal's tutelage than any of my instructors at the Schola... If he believes this is where I should be, then I can't question his judgement."

"You're in good hands, Lord Novum looks after his people." Joritu attested, abruptly turning down a small, cramped passage they could only just fit into, and they were small to begin with. "Short cut." She explained.

She committed the path to memory as they walked. Fortunately, the size of the hallway didn't affect her much, other than the fact that she now had to walk behind Joritu as opposed to beside her. Her sides brushed against the cool metallic walls, and she shivered once as they continued.

A few twisting turns later they emerged outside a large, reinforced wooden door, a vacuum seal surrounding the rich wood the only sign they weren't in a Noble's house on a wealthy planet. Joritu pulled her hand out of its holster with a rough sound as the metal of her arm rubbed against the leather of the holster. She pushed the door open, revealing a large circular room dominated by another holoprojector, with a series of cogitators set into niches against the walls.

"This room used to be the armoury, but it was converted into a data repository before my time." She explained.

Although Cantor had taken it all in stride, she couldn't help but remark on the beauty of what she saw. It was easier to do so without the Inquisitor's eyes on her, as well.

Joritu nodded. "Yes, the Concorde is a work of art. It was Lord Inquisitor Kruger's property until his death, as I understand it."

"Inquisitor Kruger... Inquisitor Novum's mentor, I'm assuming?"

Joritu nodded again. "I don't know very much about him. He died almost fifty two years ago, and the Inquisitor doesn't talk about him much."

"Ah," she said, knowing the situation was probably far more complex than she'd make it if she attempted to work it all out.

"The Inquisitor..." She mused. "He's fond of you, no?"

"He's put up with me for a decade, so I suppose that’s the case." Joritu deflected the question with a joke, busying herself with the holoprojector.

Théo caught that and smiled a bit. She'd never been one to meddle in such petty things as human affairs, but the relationship between the medic and the Inquisitor seemed... Interesting. She didn't comment further, however. Instead, she eyed the holoprojector as well, wondering exactly what Joritu had in store for her.

The projector whirred and clicked into life, a galactic map spluttering into life in midair. Joritu fiddled with it for another minute, then stepped back with a smile, reholstering her arm.

"Ask it a question." She encouraged. "You feel silly at first, but you get used to it."

"What's our current position?" she asked aloud, "And the distance to our destination?"

"Indeed," Théo said quietly. Again, mention of the Warp was just something that set her mind in motion. She'd learned more about the origin of her powers while at the Schola, but that didn't help the fact that she wasn't sure as to whether or not it deserved the negative connotations.

"I'm sure even an approximation is better than nothing, though," she said.

"It'd really be better for one of the Magi to show you around." Joritu mused. "They could answer your questions much better than I can." Then she smiled a little. "Although they do tend to ramble when given the chance."

"Well to tell the truth, I came along more for the company moreso than the tour," she said with a smirk. "The last few days have been... Trying, to say the least."

"You seem to be handling it well." Joritu said, tossing her head to clear the hair from her eyes. She nudged the projector with a foot, and the map flickered, the galaxy's known Tyranid fleets and the Imperium forces dealing with them flashing up.

"Well it isn't as though you have a control to compare it to," she said with a brief chuckle. She eyed the map as well as the small, flickering battles that were flaring up as they spoke.

Joritu nodded and smirked a little, then turned to the projector. The battles weren't real-time, of course. There was a significant time delay in Astropathic messaging, and that was only the fraction of the conflicts where the Imperium won.

"To think," she said softly, "we could cleanse the God-Emperor's realm of the Tyranids in one stroke." Her augmetic talons scraped together as she clenched her fists. "It's why people follow him." She continued, referring now to Pater. "He has a clarity of purpose, a vision. And he makes us feel we can achieve it."

"But as opposed to clarity and vision, he also seems like a man who's prepared to take action." She pursed her lips closed for a moment, instructed the map to focus on a specific quadrant of the map where the conflict was flaring. "Minds are a dime a dozen; anyone can plot an ambush on a map. Although he's difficult to read compared to others, I can tell Inquisitor Novum is every bit as experienced in the field as he is in the war room."

"He leads by example." Joritu murmured. "First in, last out."

"I'm not surprised," she said with a nod. "Lord Ronathal wouldn't have sent me here otherwise. Aside from whatever personal history they must have, Tyran respects him immensely."

"Again, before my time." Joritu said musingly. She shook her head. "I can't pretend to know the details, just stories from Anghel and Lillith."

"Like?" she asked, canting her head forward.

"Well." She thought for a moment. "They met fifty years ago on Anghel's home world, although he joined years later when the Crusade began. Inquisitor Novum was tracking a Daemonic artefact through a group of Tau black marketeers, at the same time Lord Ronathal was investigating Tau power plays in the region. They ended up accidentally blowing each other's cover and discovering a Genestealer infestation."

((OOC: More to come.))

[Josh]

"You may begin our departure," Prius ordered.

Aggregate, seven companies of Astartes, along with associated war vessels would be committed to this cause. It was truly a fearsome force, one that would require a delicate touch to balance so many warrior egos.

He stood on the bridge of the Divine Will staring at the vid-auspex.

And so it began.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The Dominion of Mankind – in high gothic – Regnum de Homines was simply a work of art. The ship was unlike almost anything in the Imperium of Man, and dated back to the dawn of Man’s Galactic Empire, in the grand gothic style of the Imperium’s cathedrals, but with a trace of the smooth lines favoured by the Eldar in its sweeping, tapering prow. It was a vessel sanctioned by the Emperor himself, a courier of persons and wealth used during the time of the great crusade, that had served with the legendary Primarchs and their Legions, and the Emperor himself in the conquest of new worlds.

Thunderbolts across its hull glowed with a serene light, held gripped in the talons of a double headed eagle, unlike the one used by the Imperium’s forces, it was almost lifelike. She drove through the warp at a speed as impressive as that of an Officio Assasinorum courier, and in her belly, those who lacked their own transports flew with the ‘Living Saint’ and her entourage aboard.

But it did not fly to the rendezvous destination, outside the Ultima Segmentum capital of Kar Duniash, not right away. Though the troop-ships of the frateris militia were slow, embarking for the rendezvous directly, the Regnum had another destination.


Lena lounged in a stateroom, quaffing a vial of regenerative drugs, as ever, a typically vile concoction. She’d meant to find out how they were made, and was presented with an opportunity to ask the Iron Man. The mechanical creature, pacing before one of the blast-shields that guarded the vessel’s windows in the immaterial realm, turned its head as she asked, twirling the vial before the wooden box containing more doses.

“You really don’t want to know,â€Â

[Cynical Cat]

Melina had stayed a while before leaving. Jolan watched her go. Their relationship was . . . . odd. It worked at least. He padded across the room to his desk. Something was up. He could feel it in the back of his skull. He had learned not to ignore that sense.

He opened a drawer on his desk and drew forth his set of the Emperor's Tarot. The card's almost flew out of his hands. The Martyr crossed over the Fiend inverted. The Magister and the Healer flanking them. Death, below, inverted. Death defeated. His hands trembled.

He touched his vox. "Gard."

It was a moment before the doctor replied. "Yes?"

"Prepare the Chamber."

[Typhonis]

Nathan floated and then felt a pulling.Something was pulling his spirit twoards one of the bright specks that often traversed where he was. OK What is this?

[Caz]

She considered that story for a moment, then realised that the man she'd trusted as a mentor and friend was almost a complete stranger.

"... I see now why Tyran never spoke of this," she said quietly, more to herself than to the other woman. "Had I known he was more than a simple tutor, I might have lost my nerve."

Cantor chuckled a bit. She respected the man to no end, but she'd not thought him to be one to pull something this clever.

[Pcm979]

"I'm afraid I don't understand." Joritu said after a moment.

[Caz]

Cantor glanced up as though she'd completely forgotten Joritu's presence in the room. She stared for a long moment as though too say Oh, I was saying that out loud?

"During my time under his instruction, Lord Ronathal never informed me of his connection to Inquisitor Novum, nor of his involvement with the Tau and Genestealer situations... To be fair, I never asked, but... I was under the impression that he was just another instructor from the Schola who'd retired to private education."

[Pcm979]

Joritu nodded. "Lord Ronathal retired from active duty some time ago due to poor health. I'm told it can happen to the more powerful Psykers; The mind grows at the expense of the body."

[Caz]

"Indeed," Cantor agreed. She allowed a bit of a wry smile. "After all, I'm the smallest on this vessel, yet I wasn't dwarfed by many at the Schola."

She remembered her encounter with the Space Marine from earlier, and admitted: "Although encountering the Astartes firsthand made me wish for taller boots."

[Pcm979]

Joritu chuckled. "They are intimidating, but wait until you see one at rest; All that massive, genengineered power bent over a game of the Emperor's Tarot. It's probably treason to say it," she smirked, "but it's almost comical."

[Caz]

"It's probably treason for me to even be here," she said, mirroring the other woman's smile. "But I'll take your word for it."

She sighed a bit, continued to peruse the map with hands that couldn't seem to stay still. The Imperial and Tyranid forces seemed to clash almost constantly, no matter where she zeroed in.

"It's because of the Tarot that I'm here, anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised as to how referent they are with it."

[Pcm979]

Joritu watched in silence, the air hissing through her robotic lungs the loudest sound in the room. "Whenever I need a sense of perspective, I just look at one of these maps." She said eventually. "Viewing the whole galaxy- Well. It makes everything else seem petty and insignificant." She nodded her head at the coloured sections of the map; The proud blue Imperium, the baleful red of the Eye, the cancerous green blotches of the Orks and the sharp purple daggers of the Tyranids.