Session V: How far down is hell and is it always this cold? - Report

General Summary

We refocus on the Crew back aboard the venerable ship the "Eternal Perdition". Rasp has been working diligently to honor the Omnisiah of the last several days and has successfully constructed a very large 'heat ray' which the crew plans to use in order to melt the ice. In addition, the emperor's holy autocannon, retrieved from the abandoned mechanicus camp on their last trip down to the planet, has now been attached to the aging and beat up lander which Stig has become fond of piloting.
The other members of the command squad have busied themselves with other tasks about the ship. Ani and Bjorn seem to have reached a point of mutual respect after Bjorn 're-educated some of his more racist helmsmen and the two of the have fallen into a rhythm of bouncing ideas off of each other. Isaac spent most of his time in the navigator's hab to keep himself attuned to the warp and looked for trouble while the other two played host to Yvraine.
Yvraine, or Eve as she mentioned she liked to be called was let out of her room by Stig and after she ingratiated herself to him with niceties she proceeded to wander the ship for the in-between time. Bjorn didn't seem to mind, and Ani was salty about it because she didn't like her bubbly personality. She thought it was fake. Eve herself, spoke to Murk in sing-songy major poly-tones as she expressed her happiness not being trapped in her room any more and the welcoming nature of most of the command crew. There were of course racists aboard among the rank and file crew members but a provocative look or a suggestive shift of her hips tended to be more disarming to the deep seeded racism than any punishments or stern talking that Bjorn had thus far handed out. She spent a great deal of time looking for signs of her previous and potentially lost ship through the scanners and helped murk on the gun deck as he ran shooting drills for the crew to get them in fighting shape.
She attempted to visit all of the command crew members at some point during the down time but Rasp was quick to shoo her out of his sacred engineering bay. That did not seem to deter her uplifted spirits though and even managed to say nice things when asked about him directly saying she admired his 'devotion to a cause'.
The time had come to head back down to Corpse-Fortune eventually however and something needed to be decided about Eve. She expressed a staunch and intractable avoidance of the frozen planet below and warned the others to not go there. It was a place of death and that they were dealing with forces that would be the end of them. Ani suggested they force Eve to come with because she didn't trust her and Rasp begrudgingly agreed, both confused about how he and a xeno could agree on something and angry with himself for such a thing being the case.
After some discussion though Bjorn made the call to leave Eve aboard which the young looking woman seemed grateful about. Ani was annoyed but accepted the order and everyone moved to the lander.
Once in the pilot seat again, Stig dropped into the atmosphere like a lead balloon and screamed down to the planet in record time. He put down practically directly on the spot where they would need to start drilling through the ice.
The doors opened and the insane temperature rolled up the ramp in through the crew's void suits alerting them once again to the abominable cold. Without wasting time the heat ray was deployed; a small tank shaped object with a removable and hand held barrel. Figuring the ray would provide enough ambient heat to keep the planet's wrath bay they got to work. Rasp positioned himself behind the tank treads he had attached the mobile cannon and Murk grabbed ahold of the barrel end.
With a gesture similarly effortless to "The Fonz" hitting a jukebox with his elbow, Rasp flicked the heat ray to life as the machine sang excitement to fulfill it's sacred task. Murk in his likewise excited state failed to adjust the settings on the output of the cannon and let lose an uncontrolled burst Burning laser rays lit out onto the dead planet and a couple of stray shots hit Isaac and Rasp.
Murk affected a look of apology as the tech priest went about trying to heal the fresh wounds already before even facing an exterior threat. Unfortunately for Isaac the mechanicus seemed better at welding metal than grafting flesh and his attempts to heal the psyker came up short. Learning from his mistakes however he managed to fix himself up completely and urged that the Ork try again with a bit more care as his mechadendrites swirled around with remonstrance.
The Ork re-centered himself and with a look as serious as you've yet seen him focused on his task of firing 'the dakka' as he put it. To everyone else's surprise his effort of concentration was met with great success.
A great gout of flame lanced out of the gun and drilled a hole deep into the half mile thick ice. The near perfectly circular hole that was melted was big enough for the heat ray to roll through and the rest of our explorers to crouch inside and walk down. The angle was steep and Murk contorted himself in strange ways to simultaneously brace the cannon from sliding, steady himself and maintain a consistent stead beam from the business end of the cannon. The rest of the crew walked nonchalantly down the fairly extreme 40 degree grade toward the temple.
The merry parade eventually came to and end however as the group reached the bottom of the hole. It was believed that Corpse-Fortune was frozen through but the group found water, and a lot of it. Apparently the planet still held the potential for life due to under water volcanic vents which has warmed the water just enough to provide a thin layer of unfrozen water far beneath the surface. Murk shut the cannon down and gave the group a quizzical look. They began to argue and pontificate about how to bypass the water hazard. Murk wasn't thrilled about talking so he jumped in and took a look around. He didn't see much from the extreme dark that his headlamps failed to illuminate effectively but he did see something properly large enough to be a problem move around at the abyssal edges of his view.
Coming out of the dark frozen hole Murk let the issue be known and the crew after a short discussion decided that this was untenable the way they were approaching the issue so they hiked back to the lander and initiated a new plan, a bold, daring plan which involved Stig flying the Aquilla lander in circles while Murk hung out the side firing downward at the ice to try and break it up enough the allow the lander the submerge itself and dive to the sunken temple below.
This 80's action movie style plan was met with modular success. Murks first attempt stalled the cannon and his second attempt saw him lose his grip and come tumbling out the side airlock of the ship. Without quick reflexes he wouldn't have been able to grab the ski of the jet. Rasp made the quick suggestion to Bjorn that they should just let him fall. The request was denied and Murk was allowed to hoist himself back into the bird. At this point it was clear something was wrong with the plan so the two mentally challenged individuals in the group tried something new. Switch places. Yes, it seems like doing the same thing over and over is insanity but the same plan with two of the internal parts of it interchanged in their roles seems to work like a charm. Stig let loose with the heat cannon and tore through the ice cap with a vengeance, cutting a whole more than large enough for the lander to move down into the water.
Closing all the exterior airlocks the lander plunged down into the icy water, sinking quickly to the bottom and resting on the ocean floor a mere 20 yards from the temple. Keeping the engines running so they wouldn't flood Murk hit the lights and the crew's view flooded with the strange temple. It reflected back a brassy shimmer of light as the floodlights on the front of the lander bounced random beams off of the strange temple which seemed to have miniscule pictographs all over it. The level of detail was too high to be done by anything but an artists hand but the size of the temple itself said that it would of taken hundreds of such artists as many lifetimes to complete the work.
Ani, Bjorn, Isaac and Rasp swam out to the temple to locate a way in. They discovered a large seem that ran vertically up the temple that suggested it was a door as the sediment of the ocean which clung to other parts of the submerged temple did not linger on. Isaac still didn't reach out with any powers as Bjorn had told him to withhold using his powers if possible due to them potentially drawing the attention of the strange enemies they had encountered thus far. Ani drew on her training as a linguist and examined the glyphs closely. While she wasn't able to get direct meaning she was able to determine that this door could open and after some intense scrutiny and pushed a seemingly random pattern of glyphs to allow that to happen. Misha must have blessed her momentarily with divine insight.
The doors opened slowly and Murk piloted the lander into the lock while the crew outside swam in the rest of the way. One the ship set down the doors closed again behind and the room began to drain. Once the water was completely removed the far wall opposite the door moved slowly down until the top was flush with the floor. A great hallway many hundreds of yards stretched forward into the waiting darkness.
The hallway the group traveled down was vast, with enough space to have two large ammo trucks side by side to drive along it. The strange glyphs covered every surface, floors, walls, ceilings and columns which supported untold amounts of weight and pressure from the black crush outside. The headlamps seemed to be not up to the task to fully light their way as their waning light struggled to keep back the seemingly preternatural darkness. Eventually the hallway came to a 'T' and the group decided to head left.
The group began to hear strange chanting in a language they hadn't heard before. Ani with her keen Aeldari senses was able to make out that they were specific words being spoken from human tongues. She and Bjorn moved stealthily forward to investigate more closely. When they eventually turned a corner they witnessed a strange site. Mechanicus were standing in a circle around a dozen golden spinal columns. The spines seemed inert but as they watch little motes of blue light began to appear from the air and drifted down onto the macabre objects and seemed to collect there until the oddities crackled and sparked with bluish hued electricity.
With their void suits pics recorders they relayed this information back to the rest of the party waiting patiently for their return. All patiently waiting except one. Upon seeing this tech heresy Rasp flew into a rage, his spider legs clinking wild and loudly against the weird metal surfaces and like an angry mantis tore off down the hallway toward these offenders to snuff them out permanently.
Ani and Bjorn had only just enough time to get into a good position as to prepare for the inevitable fight now that the tech-priest was coming. Blood, bullets and viscera were the result of the next few moments. Rasp came skittering into the room resolute to purge these heretic hereteks. The others had no choice but follow and join the fray. Isaac used his powers to create a barrier that lessened the incoming damage, Ani and Bjorn fired away at the gathering of formerly imperial followers turned to some other misbegotten creed. Bjorn lashed out from his somewhat hidden position. Murk and Stig found new and interesting ways to cut down the people that had been identified as 'not with us' and Rasp mostly just got beat up. In the end after a great deal of damage was done to both sides and buckets of blood were spilled the Hereteks lay dead in pieces, bumping into themselves and the party was left with a dozen weird golden spines.
Murk and Stig had used one spine together during the combat to perform a strange dance that left many dead in it's wake and Murk had subsequently used the spine to beat another mechanicus gone rogue to death. Afterward, Murk then went around at Bjorn and Isaac's request snapping all the golden spines. The strange bluish electricity around them sputtered and died and all that was left were the strange inert fetishes. The group got their bearing and continued on, further in to the strange temple full of untold dangers.

Rewards Granted

5xp 12 golden spines (now broken / snapped)

Missions/Quests Completed

The Milk Run Objective 1: Collecting the Cargo

Character(s) interacted with

Yvraine Ullathani Heretek Mechanicus

Campaign

Legacy of a Rogue

Protagonists

Stig

Stig

Species

Career

Militant

B 4

A 3

I 2

C 2

W 2

P 2

Wounds 21/21

Strain 13/13

Soak 8

Defence M1/R1

Murc Boilah-Krusha

Murc

Species

Career

Ork

Ork

B 5

A 3

I 1

C 2

W 3

P 2

Wounds 0/26

Strain 4/13

Soak 9

Defence M1/R1

Rasputin

Rasp

Species

Career

Forge World

Chiurgeon

B 3

A 3

I 4

C 2

W 3

P 1

Wounds /13

Strain /13

Soak 4

Defence M1/R1

Vanirach

Vanirach (Ani)

Species

Career

Eldar

First-Mate/Interpreter

B 2

A 3

I 3

C 2

W 2

P 2

Wounds 1/12

Strain 0/12

Soak 6

Defence M1/R1

Report Date

30 Sep 2020

Primary Location

Corpse-Fortune