Session XIX: The warzone - Report

General Summary

Bjorn pushed the engines of the newly acquired Sky Talon as the crew flew towards the warzone. Soon chaff and explosions were bursting around the exterior of the ship as he forced his way into the demilitarized zone between the lines. The constant shelling and push and pull of the battle lines had blasted the landscape leaving charred, ugly mud holes. Bjorn wasn't thrilled to be hovering over and active battlefield so Rasp got to work. He scanned the nearby wreckage and found what he believed to be a suitable donor vehicle.   The machine spirit came back with a proper return and Rasp pinged the target. The large ship swooped over and and came to a stop hovering over the wreckage of an Imperial Chimera. After a short discussion of who should go down their Rasp and the two toughs Stig and Murk hooked on carabiners and repelled down to the ground.   Stig made it a point to be down first, not to be outdone again by his big green friend and essentially plummeted from the Sky Talon with little to no resistance. With an audible thud, even over the roaring engines the overly large human is indeed win the race much to his ribs distress as Stig belly flopped on to the ground from easily 30 feet.   Rasp and Murk made it to the ground soon after and got to work as well. Bjorn steered the ship out of the combat zone, already being shot at by stray Ork missiles and other hand held weapons. Murk and Stig got to work securing the machine which was half buried under the embankment created by a large ordinance crater. Likely the cause of the war machine's immobilization.    Rasp started assessing the damage while the other two started preparing the wreckage for transport. All the while shot and shell haphazardly fell around them as the three men worked to secure their prize. Eventually everything that could be done had been in the location they were at. The vehicle had been dug out and the mooring brackets checked and prepared for transport. Rasp was able to rouse the rudimentary machine spirit back to life and Murk took up position on the 50 caliber machine gun.    Bjorn flew back into the zone and Stig attached the mooring cables and hung off the side, striking a pose to intimidate the Orks shooting at them. It wasn't effective but he felt important and that's really the point in situations involving Stig.   As Bjorn lifted the recovered Chimera with the Sky Talon a lucky rocket shot from an Ork on the ground hit one of the turbines and set fire to it. Bjorn acted quickly to disable the burning turbine and pilot away from the zone under half power. The Sky Talon would not be able to leave atmosphere until it was repaired now either. Rasp had a growing 'honey-do' list it seemed.   The team flew their newly acquired vehicles to a secluded vail on the far side of some nearby foothills, shielded from the battle front. The Bjorn decided on Ani's warning that the spear should be their top priority and recovering it wouldn't be possible without the Chimera so Rasp was set to task on the APC before the Valkyrie Sky Talon.    The repairs took Rasp more time than initially expected. Isaac used this down time to try and discover the best possible route to reach the Shine of St. Drusus. Bjorn and Ani argued and fretted about a myriad of subjects all of which were thinly veiled personal issues and Murk and Stig hid the Valkyrie to the best of their ability trying to make it look like another wreck that wouldn't be easily looted in case the battle lines shifted against them while they left the ship behind. Murk also did his best to camouflage the Chimera to appear as a looted tank so it wouldn't raise as much Ork suspicion.    Eventually the blessed repairs were complete and the team rolled out immediately. Travel wasn't fast but it was certainly safer and faster than traveling on foot. During the middle of the first night as most of the crew haltingly slept in the back of the APC they were voxed by an Ork. Bjorn smacked Murk to attention as he rode shotgun. Murk played dumb exceedingly well and eventually the two Ork were arguing over the usual thing that Orks do. Which of them was bigger. Seeing as how the Nob which had voxed the crew was in a buggy and had two others on warbikes in his crew Bjorn decided it would be best if he let Murk deal with his cousins directly.   A challenge was issued and Murk stepped out of the body of the Chimera ready to do mortal combat. The rest of the crew hid inside the Chimera, doing their best not to tip off the fact that the hold of the APC was filled with non-greenskins well behind enemy lines. Murk took the challenge by the Nob of close to equal size with a grim delight. He was sick of traveling and this Ork was ready for a good stompin'. Needless to say but the combat between the two didn't last long. The warbikes were sent off without issue as Murk stood of the broken body of the Nob, roaring into the darkness his and every other Ork's excited birthright of "Waaagh!".   The rest of the trip was without incident. As they approached the shrine, near dawn, a large convoy of greenskins was traveling in the same direction on the ridge above them trying to reach the shrine as well to get stuck in. The crew stayed in the parallel running gully and allowed them to get ahead. As they got into vox range of the Shrine they saw what they were up against. A huge conglomeration of Orks had blockaded the entrance to the Shrine and a massive kill zone radius had been established around it's fortifications. Bjorn voxed the shrine and sought clearance to approach and enter. The vox operator in the shrine seemed non-plus to the idea of opening it's gates even for a moment. It made sense, if the Orks saw an opening they would undoubtedly go for it.   The operator told them to make a distraction but taking out the looted basilisk gun emplacements at the top of a nearby mountain that the Orks had hauled up there to shell the shrine. Their destruction would likely give the team the distraction it needed to get in the doors without letting a flood of Orks in along with them. The team considered this proposal for a moment and Isaac considered finding another way in. The navigator augured that there was a hidden entrance on the far side of the cliff face behind the battle that they could use to enter the fortress-shrine. This cinched the deal for the crew. Instead of helping the imperium they could just slip in the back. This seemed like the better choice to them and the crew made haste for the hidden entrance. Hopefully their self centric way of operating didn't make them any more enemies as it had in the past.

Rewards Granted

• +3 xp
• 74 total xp

 

• Ani +9xp (previous logs)
• Bjorn +9xp (previous logs)
• Isaac +5xp (previous logs and hidden plot found)
• Murk +6xp (previous logs)
• Rasp +1xp (previous haikus)
• Stig +9xp (previous logs)

Missions/Quests Completed

• The Milk Run (Completed)
• Grasping hands from every corner of the Void - Part 1 & Part 2 complete Part 3 (In process)
• Ani - Getting past the visions of the future (Part 1 complete, Part 2 - In process)
• Bjorn - Darktide (begun - Part 1, optional objective 1 failed, Part 2 - In process)
• Isaac - The god-machine (Part 1 & 2 complete, Part 3 - In process)
• Murk - A tail of two Waaagh! (begun, optional object 1 failed, Part 2 - In process)
• Rasp - Children of the Machine (begun - detoured - Objective 1 critical, Objective 2 failed.)
• Stig - The Jungles of Ash (begun - detoured - Objective 1 failed, Part 2 - In process)

Character(s) interacted with

Orks

Related Reports

Session XVIII