Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[VoidSlayer]

OOC thread

the Crew, current:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gilgamehdestroyer as Sierra-Beta the Explorator

My Name Is Immaterial as Sarvus the Seneschal

Criptfeind as Nathin the Astropath Transcendent

Ghazkull Kordag Blightfang the Kroot

Aseaheru as Herenton the VOIDMASTER

Strik as Holt Kennoch the Rogue Trader

Kassire as Bron the Dirty Mutant (Archmilitant)

Tiruin as Amara the Navigator

Twinwolf as Anarette the Archmilitant

Former crew:

The honored dead:


After having passed through the warp-gate known as the Aurorus Ring the passage has been quite smooth.  Three weeks have passed with no incidents and it will be another three until the ship emerges near Port New Haven.  Lord Captain Holt and his esteemed crew have been invited to an opera being put on by another Rogue Trader, a rare chance to see the famed Navigator-Vocalist Saydra Marrine.

The command staff are meeting in the early hours of third watch. An informal game of Dalen-Dash, a card and token betting system, hosted by Captain Holt.  These semi-regular games have become a combination of debriefing and strategy session in a calm atmosphere. 

Spoiler: On Spoilers (click to show/hide)

Private information, but here to give players a full picture of the story.  Just do not act on it unless you have a good reason.  Nothing too heretical.

Captain Holt

Spoiler: Lord-Captain Holt (click to show/hide)

You are distracted from the game by thoughts of why you are here.  You remember your last conversation with Victris Kennoch, your grandfather who recently passed on his mantle to you.

When you first saw him in the bio crypt, thin arms, tubes coming out of his body, surrounded by bio-magus clicking away, you hardly recognized him as the man you once knew.  The man who only two months earlier had pulled a blade from an assassin's hand, stabbed him through the gut with it, flung him on the table, then sat and renegotiated terms with the Navigator guild.  When he looked at you though the light came back in dazed eyes, and the fury with it as he shouted for the scum to leave the room.

My boy, he started, you have the right now, at this late day, to know the truth.  What I did, I did for you, and for our house.  You know the Pak-Hal, that they killed your parents, your siblings.  That is only part of the truth.

I do not know how they did it, but the evidence they brought was undeniable.  It was full of lies, but all proof had vanished and the only shield left to your father was our family honor and name, a flimsy one as I am sure you have learned.  His face was a mask of pain as he talks and it is clear that the tubes and wounds were not causing it.

I could not save your parents, or your siblings, but they could not touch my heir.  That is why I named you, eldest of my grandchildren, to the post that should have been your father's.  It was a risk, we have other branches of the family, we would have survived, but I had to save whoever I could.

The trial you undertook, it has not been done in truth for hundreds of years.  Training with master warriors and hunters, learning at the right hand of my father.  That is how it has in truth been done for too long.  My own trial was little more then a hunting trip.  But there they could not touch you and you became a true leader.  Now I see why it was done that way in the past.

If I had done so maybe...  His eyes glazed over then he snapped back.

I took revenge though.  A hundred daggers and more scribes.  We unearthed the truth and saw the conspirators removed.  The enemy still lives, but they have nothing they can hold over you now.  Or your siblings.

They should have died. 

But your mother was more clever then anyone had given her credit.  They escaped, to the Aurorus expanse.  Three brothers and three sisters.  I tried to track them down, bring them home when I learned.  The danger has passed, but the trail runs cold.

You are the Lord-Captain now and I will not live out the month, but I ask you, as a last favor to a guilty old man, go to the expanse and find them.  Or let them find you.  Thrones can not buy the ties of family I had to take from you, but fate has intervened.

To run from an enemy, to find fortune, to find family, all good reasons to pass through the warp gate.

Spoiler: Sierra-Beta (click to show/hide)

The last few weeks have been routine, almost like you are back on the station, look over this, take notes on that.  The feeling is warm and cruel, reminding you of innocence lost and betrayal.

You have learned much in the time.  How much of what you were taught was wrong, or full of unnecessary motions. 

It is not easy to sneak the extra rations you need though.  A string of unexplained deaths in the livestock on deck Q are not so unexplained to you.  Everything needs fuel after all.

Too much time is spent thinking on your sisters.  They escaped to here, the tracker was imprecise but powerful, now destroyed.  Your desire to eat them grows but so too does your curiosity.  Who are they now, who now are you?

Spoiler: Sarvus (click to show/hide)

What is a quiet time for others has you working feverishly.

Your notes need to be collected, scraps of information in a simple code, organized and kept in a secret place.  Every day running numbers through the machine to find where and what and who.

And then there are the mysteries.  Livestock going missing, mutant corpses found mutilated on the lower decks, reports of some hideous beast in armor.  Your nights are spent looking, talking, listening.  For anything that can keep the ship running, or tear it apart.

You do manage to find and infiltrate a small death-cult, less then six members, when you notice a discrepancy in food ration distributions.  A job well done, though only a small one.  You look to bigger things.

Feel free to start talking, for now this is a holding lobby for some initial role play before I start the real opening on Port New Haven.  The other accepted characters are also here and I will update what they have been up to soon.

[NRDL]

PTW

[Ghazkull]

Kordag silently stood behind the Lord Captains chair leaned against the wall. That was his customary place when the humans played these games. He was never invited and he never asked; besides he liked watching far more than playing himself.

[GiglameshDespair]

Sierra-Beta was quite good at the game.
Pattern recognition. Analysis of remaining cards. Some had seemed surprised a techpriest had deigned to take part, and she'd only realised the blunder to her masquarade when it was too late.

Her intelligence was probably the highest on the ship, assisted and tamed by the neural circuity implanted by her mother/sister/creator.

She wondered what her sisters were doing. Had they ended on a similiar path? Replace, then assimilate? She alone, presumbly, had the extent of her own cybernetics, and wore her mother/sister/creator's mantle. She had the advantage.
It was why they fled, from the dark tunnels they had hunted each other.

Meat. Appetite, always growing. Troublesome. With a proper lab set up she could clone flesh for consumption. If all else failed, and the ship-cattle ran out, there were plenty of crew. A few would not be missed.

[VoidSlayer]

Spoiler: Nathin (click to show/hide)

Your time is mostly spent in quiet meditation and prayer.

The warp gate muffles signals and trying to reach outside can be perilous, so you have no real duties during such times outside of caring for the less fortunate astropaths who make up your choir. 

Two are almost totally paralyzed, though you mind speak to them often to keep them in high spirits. 

Smarkle is insane by any definition but he keeps to his locked cell most of the time. 

The twins are just unsettling, they never speak and spend most of their time with each other.  They seem comfortable enough and do your bidding, but sometimes it seems like it is one person there, not two. 

Lastly there is your apprentice, a jovial and athletic woman who has still not fully grasped how disturbing that is to others who see the ruin of her face.  She is inexperienced but has great potential.

As is your duty you also get to know most of the important heads of the ship so you can relay messages if needed, but the cold shoulder most of them give has you alone with the emperor for much of the trip.

You also saw the Kroot eating a live quill rat in a hallway so that is something.

Spoiler: Kordag Blightfang (click to show/hide)

The new ship-world you are on is exciting, with smells and tastes both rancid and novel.

The job you thought was a joke has turned into a serious philosophical debate you have been going over in your mind.  To protect a body by killing, to hunt without hunting.  You had heard of such things before but to be faced with it is perplexing.

There are many interesting things to eat on board.  Not the Gul or their livestock.  One are clients, and the mercenary contract does say not to eat clients.  The other are not worthy prey.  But you have been named twistcatcher, a strange job that lets you hunt those who are human but not human.

You really are suppose to bring them in for questioning, execution or service, but if a few are found torn up on the lower decks, few care.

There was also a strange quilled rodent and something with more claws and fangs then you could count.  Both were tasty.

You think to the grey ones and how far your feet have carried you from the world of your birth.

Spoiler: Herenton (click to show/hide)

You have spent your time in your duties, helping manage the voidfairers who care little about who is really in charge.  Your free time is spent polishing the [Name Lathe-Pattern Shark Assault Boat] and planning on how to find pirates who took your life away from you.

It is along term goal, a soft flame but it keeps you warm.

Spoiler: Bron (click to show/hide)

You spend your time guarding the Captain or enforcing his will among the crew.  Sarvus points you to some cultists and you have an easy time bringing two of them in alive.  The Kroot also invites you on some excursions below deck where you find it relatively pleasant company as well as a dangerous and merciless combatant.

Most of your off time is spent in private however.  You are seen at least once, "mask" off, by someone on the ship but they flee at the sight and you were out of uniform.  You hear only rumors of a monster stalking the halls and many times it gets mixed up with the xeno.

Spoiler: Amara (click to show/hide)

The calm warp around the ship belies the vision you have just outside the tunnel, terrifying storms of energy stronger then you have often seen.  Whatever this passage travels through, it is not pleasant.

It does make good training for Serge, an apprentice navigator from a lesser house assigned as a second to the ship.  He seems rather intelligent but is often distracted by what most teenagers are distracted by.  Would probably have more success if not for his mouth full of sharp teeth.

Having a second navigator at all seems like such a luxury compared to fleet ships but the distance you have traveled from your home fleet is on display before you. 

Your mind often turns to the mysteries of the planet you escaped from and what Captain Holt could be thinking about bringing you on board.  The chance to return and face the mysteries again bring up mixed feelings.

Spoiler: Anarette (click to show/hide)

Though you have been discharged from the guard you were never dismissed.  Your orders were clear, observe the expanse, look for the finest warriors, greatest weapons, most dangerous foes and report it back to command.

No one but Holt knows of this, a good cover story has been devised, as he was forced to take you on grudgingly at first.  He has assigned you to train the voidsmen in combat and you find it a grueling task.  They have far too many rights to be treated as guardsmen, no executing or maiming for failures in training, only a scant few hours dedicated to combat.

Despite this you manage to get them to work in groups and at least have several dozen who you would be willing to stand in a line with.

[Stirk]

((I like to story so far. Interesting spin on it all, though I don't really have any interesting ideas on what to post to start with :-/.))

Holt is sitting on his throne-like chair, a simple wooden construction decorated with xenos-pelts and topped with the skull of a particularly fearsome looking beast. His chin is resting on his left fist, while his right hand goes through the motions of the game. From the look on his face, it was clear his thoughts where elsewhere at the moment.

[Aseaheru]

 Herenton was aboard the Shark Assault Boat he had been assigned so long ago, in what felt like another life, conferring with the last members of the Spirit. Most where his crew, but there where others who had survived and where retrieved after the pirates  left them to float among the detritus of their homes and families.

[Twinwolf]

Anarette's presence on the bridge is mostly for the strategy and debrief rather than the game itself. She'd rather be doing something productive while she was up, but her presence was expected at such an event. That said, while she was here she may as well make an effort.

The intelligence of the Master at Arms might be surprising to those who only knew her by position. What brains are needed in pointing a gun or swinging a sword, after all? Many would think of a muscle-bound brute in the position. But despite this, Anarette is probably the next most intelligent to the tech priest (why was she here, anyway? Did she not have more important duties, regarding the ship?)- although likely not nearly as learned in subjects of lore as some other officers- and is keeping up with the augmented enginseer in the game.

[S34N1C]

PTW

[VoidSlayer]

As the first game progresses Anarette and Sierra-Beta make several solid moves, countering each other and drawing the board to a stalemate between them.  Then Holt draws a new hand and... it is perfect.  A few cards go down and the board is covered in knock down pieces.  A fateful card is drawn for the next round and it is Disaster.  It takes only a few seconds of glancing over the table for everyone to realize it is a draw. 

The table wins the round and the bets are moved to a pot for the second game.

It is clear to Kordag that the Captain is not interested, he could have easily turned that hand into a win if he had been paying attention.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Everyone rolled 2 degrees of success so I rolled a d4 for who won and got a 4...

[Criptfeind]

Nathin sat on a chair at the meeting table, paying almost no attention to the game, instead his empty sockets were turned towards on a wall, resting his 'sight' on nothingness. Once the hand finished, in a draw apparently, Nathin took the his time as he put his requisite ante forward to study the other members of the command staff. Although he had only known them for a short time, not a one of them seemed the type that Nathin was likely to get along with well. Still, to serve did not require to get along with, and perhaps, just perhaps, with time some as yet hidden quality within one or more of them would reveal itself and them as more then just a planet dwelling rogue.

As his gaze moved over the xenos pet the captain kept, his mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. It was surely quite uncouth that such a creature would be allowed in the meeting room. Certainly even giving such a thing the free range it had instead of keeping it in some sort of cage (or even better, out an air lock) was simply irresponsible. However, saying such things was not Nathins place, and so he fought back his disgust and moved his gaze onward to the captain himself.

Although sometimes difficult to make out though the flashes of insight, impression, and inspiration that made up his sight, the facial expression on the captains face was unmistakable to even Nathin as some who's mind was a sector away.

"So then all seems to be going well and, Emperor willing, in three weeks we shall be in port Port New Haven and the Aurorus Expanse. Have we given any thought to what we shall do once we have arrived? Or, perhaps thought to something else, as you seem quite distracted by something." Nathin asked.

[Ghazkull]

Kordag was confused...as usual. Why would the Captain lose the game? He was not about to ask, it was expected of him to stay silent, if only to avoid any altercations with the Crew, besides he didnt want to question the Captains authority like that foolish Gul across from him did.

He smelled all wrong too. Tainted in the smells of the inedible. Something to keep a distance to, as the Gul was bound to be consumed by the Inedible in due time.

The Inedible. Chaos as the Gul called it. A strange and unknown concept to the Kin. It smelled horrible and tasted worse, anathema to his kind. Yet the Gul seemed to hate it all the while using it at the same time...strange beings indeed.

He waited for the Captain to speak, his beak clattering once to show his assent, although the Gul of course would not understand.

[Stirk]

Nathin sat on a chair at the meeting table, paying almost no attention to the game, instead his empty sockets were turned towards on a wall, resting his 'sight' on nothingness. Once the hand finished, in a draw apparently, Nathin took the his time as he put his requisite ante forward to study the other members of the command staff. Although he had only known them for a short time, not a one of them seemed the type that Nathin was likely to get along with well. Still, to serve did not require to get along with, and perhaps, just perhaps, with time some as yet hidden quality within one or more of them would reveal itself and them as more then just a planet dwelling rogue.

As his gaze moved over the xenos pet the captain kept, his mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. It was surely quite uncouth that such a creature would be allowed in the meeting room. Certainly even giving such a thing the free range it had instead of keeping it in some sort of cage (or even better, out an air lock) was simply irresponsible. However, saying such things was not Nathins place, and so he fought back his disgust and moved his gaze onward to the captain himself.

Although sometimes difficult to make out though the flashes of insight, impression, and inspiration that made up his sight, the facial expression on the captains face was unmistakable to even Nathin as some who's mind was a sector away.

"So then all seems to be going well and, Emperor willing, in three weeks we shall be in port Port New Haven and the Aurorus Expanse. Have we given any thought to what we shall do once we have arrived? Or, perhaps thought to something else, as you seem quite distracted by something." Nathin asked.

Without particular movement or change in expression, Holt speaks. "My mind is simply on the opera. You know how I do so love the arts." Finally, his expression shifts, though his position stands firm. "We will resupply ourselves at the Port. The journey has been difficult on some of the supplies, so the reports say. After that is settled, it is off to the opera."

[Kassire]

Bron played at the game quietly enough, with the occasional murmur, remark, and curse at a misplay and loss. Though one cannot be too sure about what lies underneath the masks and heavy clothes the bulky man wears. With a glance at Holt and Nathin he only shakes his head and speaks in a deep rough voice, I don't understand why we'd waste time at some 'opera', but if yer' hunting for something good, my blade's at the ready. Even if I'm pissing like a grox.

[My Name is Immaterial]

From an adjacent chair, Sarvus watches the game, occasionally taking notes on a dataslate, and taking messages from runners from various departments of the ship. Dalen-Dash appealed to him conceptually, because it was a good practice field for the machinations of his work, but he had little experience with the peasants' game. The tech-prie... no, the herete- no, not that either... the Engineseer Prime may be near perfect with the numbers of the game, but they telegraphed their moves to a ridiculous extent. The Lord-Captain, on the other hand, his head was not for the numbers, but he had skill and stoicism (or perhaps absentmindedness) on his side, something the Explorator clearly lacked. Still, he watched the mechanic appendages as they held the cards: one could never be too sure that they wouldn't spring forth an extra card to tilt the game.
Still remembering the last time he played, and got thoroughly trounced, he passed on the opportunity to be dealt in.

Without particular movement or change in expression, Holt speaks. "My mind is simply on the opera. You know how I do so love the arts." Finally, his expression shifts, though his position stands firm. "We will resupply ourselves at the Port. The journey has been difficult on some of the supplies, so the reports say. After that is settled, it is off to the opera."

Sarvus chides the Lord-Captain, "Lord-Captain, I do implore you, leave that concern to me. I have already compiled the list of necessary resupplies, which I foresee no issues procuring. I've scheduled a meeting with Nathin to send astropathic messages to the contacts I have in the local government and merchants to prepare for our arrival. Your focus, if I may be so bold, should be on preparing for the opera, and meeting with the other Trader who procured us this invitation. I foresee a productive outcome, if handled correctly."
The High Factotum turns towards the ship's Master Telepathica, Nathin, while consulting his dataslate. "We are still meeting at ten hundred, next cycle, correct? You said that would be best for you, last week."
Hardly waiting for an answer, he turns back to the Lord-Captain, he beckons forward an aid, carrying reams of parchment. "Moving on, Lord-Captain, would you like to hear my report on the status of the ship, crew, and cargo?"