Session XXIV: The bug hunt - Report
General Summary
Once more into the breach. Captain Felrider was indisposed aboard the 'Eternal Perdition' so leadership and command of the gathered crew fell to Ani, who reluctantly but purposely got the rest of the crew moving. Rasp didn't even complain too terribly much about the situation.
Food was still the priority and Ani made haste towards the cargo holds of the ancient vessel they found themselves on. Murk continued to eye the IG they had will them like pigs in a blanket and Stig continued to dim-wittedly point his large weapons at every darkened corner they passed by.
"The Righteous Path" still housed whatever abomination the Tyranid race had dreamed up and the gruesome deaths of an entire company of their guards still rang in their ears from the final screaming transmission they had received. Never one to care terribly much for his more fleshy counterparts Rasp became distracted by the grandeur of the ship they moved through. Obviously "The Righteous Path" had been built in a more noble era of greater wealth as the ship nearly sparkled with opulence, even dimly lit by emergency lighting.
Half way through one of the the passenger habs Rasp noticed deactivated Cherubim that clung to the high corners of the fresco covered ceilings. They were quite camouflaged with the intense amount of imperial iconography around them but the mechanical eyes of the creepy baby angels were a dead give away. As such Rasp proposed a detour. "I'm going to the engineerium to activate the cherubs" he stated as the red robed man headed past a turn in the route toward the cargo holds.
Ani's face burned with annoyance at the willfulness of the tech-priest but as Stig and Murk both only understood action they followed, more out of habit of locking on to movement and shiny things rather than disobeying orders, but deviated from the established plan regardless. The struggle was real for the young Aeldari woman now very surrounded by somewhat toxic masculinity.
Ani set her troubles aside for the moment and bade the IG to follow her as the crew moved into the engineerium. The heart of "The Righteous Path" was massive, a third again larger than that aboard the 'perdition'. The amount of sustained G's that this ship could likely accelerate at a rate of would likely put their home ship to shame. Rasp was delighted while the toughs were bored. After some tinkering with the systems Rasp was able to activate the Cherubim and designated them to search the ship for intrusive xenos creatures. He was careful to exclude the Eldar and the Ork from the mix.
The downside of activating the winged servitors was that he did not have the chief engineer's access codes so anything the creepy babies discovered would remain a secret until Rasp could either hack into their very complex video feed system or if he found the code somehow. Satisfied for the moment Rasp agreed when Ani stated they should move on.
As the crew was leaving the engine room Bjorn finally caught back up with the crew saying that a feral cat had been stowed away aboard the perdition and had to be hunted down before things got out of hand. Together again the group dropped down a level and headed towards the front of the ship again passing through an auxiliary cargo hold. Large crates were in the hold, all sealed except for one and strange bluish bio-luminescent light filtered out of the box. In it were large tube-like capsules that suspended tiny strange creatures in it. Vaguely Tyranid in some cases and unknowable in most others the tiny creatures looked like frozen chibi's of something larger and more disturbing.
Murk, ever vigilant and sharp eyed was the only one to notice the strange tiny symbol adorning the bottom corner of all the crates. Unfortunately Murk was ever poor of vocabulary and him trying to point the symbol out to his compatriots drew a number of vacant looks for a while until it was finally pieced together from the greenskin's speech that he was trying to bring their attention to what Bjorn, Rasp and Ani remembered was the symbol for the cartel known as the "serrated query". Stig had dealt with this group in the Calixis sector proper in his past life as a member of an inquisitor's retinue but he didn't have much to say on the subject.
The rest of the crew that knew of them remembered that they were heavy hitters in the 'cold trade' and that they would be merciless should it become known that their merchandise had been absconded with. Carefully setting down the glasscrete tubes the group decided to move on to the cargo bay proper as Ani was about to lose her shit as the group threatened to side track yet again to the command bridge in search of the lost access codes to get the ship up and running.
The Humans were rubbing off on the Eldar (cue drumset rimshot) clearly as the ball of nerves that was Ani at the moment made it obvious her desire to finish the primary objective of bringing foodstuffs back to the 'perdition'. Everyone else, browbeaten into submission agreed and moved on to the next deck where the cargo bay waited for them.
FOOD! Lots of it in fact. Crates and crates. Enough to keep the crew of the perdition fed for a couple months before resupply was waiting for them here in hermetically sealed containers. After directing the company of guard with them to start hauling it up to the entry point between ships a question came to the fore.
Why was there food here? More over why were there potentially living creatures in tubes in the next deck over. The crew of "the Righteous Path" were clearly missing. The hallways were clean of pretty much everything. The bunks of crew were emptied out, no blood and gore like what had happened to the other company of IG, just nothing left that would suggest this ship was anything but abandoned. Stringing what they knew of the creature together it became the likely answer that the items the team had found along the way were still there due to the fact that the creature must rely exclusively or near exclusively on it's olfactory sense rather than sight.
With this in mind the group did what they could to mask their scent and quickly left towards the upper decks where they had entered from. The trip was blessedly without incident and the food was offloaded to the 'perdition' without incident. Bjorn was ready to claim the 'righteous' for his own at this point though and ordered the assembled to once again step forward into danger and headed towards the bridge of this ghost ship.
Reaching the main hallway to the command bridge the team was confronted with a very large, very heavy, sealed blast door. Stig entered the universal code of 80085 into the keypad near the door but unfortunately it didn't take. Clearly a highly capable tech adept had set the door codes aboard the 'righteous'.
Bjorn and Murk looked overhead and noticed a vent system that would bypass the door. The Ork hoisted his captain up and dead lifted himself in afterward. The thin metal of the vent groaned and complained popping loudly as the man and massive Ork's weight bore down on it. On the other side of the blast door Murk saw a control switch which consisted of a red and green button. Bjorn told him to specifically hit the green one after Murk got down from the vent. This seemed wrong to Murk but he did as he was told while the Captain forged on ahead in the vent.
Rounding a corner in the vent network Bjorn heard a high pitched whir spring to life like the sound of an old flash bulb charger. A moment of recognition with the obligatory exclamation of "oh shit" from Bjorn and suddenly a mounted heavy stubber set up on a tripod and tracked to motion lit out in the darkness sending slug after slug Bjorn's way, most of which were avoided but a few landed and Bjorn had to crawl back to safety, wounded but not out. Lucky as usual.
Ani and Murk expressed concern, ready to jump into the vent while Stig and Rasp carried on as business as usual. "I'm ok" came from the vent and the two xenos relaxed a bit. Bjorn thought it wise to get down from the vent as well and everyone strode forward into the command bridge.
Signs of former life were abundant here unlike the rest of the ship. Litter and garbage were strewn here and there, half empty cases of shells, last letters to loved ones and the musty smell of old death. Long since decomposed and desiccated. Stepping onto the bridge proper the crew found the skeletal remains of the captain, still in his chair, the chief engineer long dead in his mechanicus robes and the chief navigator below the floor locked in the navigator's well specially designed to allow them to use their considerable powers from the bridge like the rest of the crew.
Rasp got to work on the large device central in the room that housed the consciousness of the ship trying to find the source of the reason he came. An STC. It's location was of utmost importance to complete his mission. As the tech priest whiled away at the keys, trying to rouse the machine spirit to life and gather any information he could on the STC and it's house he made some sort of sacred rite key stroke error and alarms started going off.
This must of been all it took because there finally came a deep roar from back the way they came and an ominous but insistent banging on the blast door which the team had wisely shut behind them. At the same time another Rogue Trader hailed them from nearby. Apparently the crew wasn't the only team hunting the STC aboard. The captain on the view screen gave the team an ultimatum to hand over the STC or he would destroy both the "Righteous Path" and the "Eternal Perdition" in order to sift through the rubble for what he needed.
Stig being incredibly pig headed simply said "ok, we agree" and promptly shut off communication with the enemy ship thinking this would somehow instill confidence in their aggressor. Rock, meet hard place. Here comes trouble next time.
Rewards Granted
- +3 xp
- 94 total xp
- Ani +13xp (previous logs)
- Bjorn +13xp (previous logs)
- Isaac +6xp (previous logs and hidden plot found)
- Murk +8xp (previous logs)
- Rasp +1xp (previous haikus) Stig +13xp (previous logs)
Missions/Quests Completed
COMPLETED MISSIONS
- The Milk Run (Completed)
- Murk - A tail of two Waaagh! (Completed)
- Ani - Getting past the visions of the future (Complete)
- Grasping hands from every corner of the Void - Part 1 & Part 2 complete Part 3 (In process)
- Bjorn - Darktide (begun - Part 1, optional objective 1 failed, Part 2 Complete, Part 3 - In process)
- Isaac - The god-machine (Part 1 & 2 complete, Part 3 - In process)
- Rasp - Children of the Machine (begun - detoured - Objective 1 Complete, Objective 2 failed, Objective 3, - In Process.)
- Stig - The Jungles of Ash (begun - detoured - Objective 1 failed, Part 2 - In process)
Character(s) interacted with
Enemy Rogue Trader (No name learned yet)
Created Content
Species: Tyranids
Article Plaentary Subjugation
Related Reports
Session XXIII
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B
4
A
3
I
2
C
2
W
2
P
2
Wounds
21/21
Strain
13/13
Soak
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Murc Boilah-Krusha
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Rasputin
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Forge World
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3
A
3
I
4
C
2
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3
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1
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Vanirach
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2
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3
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Defence
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Report Date
08 Mar 2021
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