Warhammer 40k: Wrath & Glory RP #1
So about 2 years after finishing KoNS, I’m starting another “another RP”. This time it’s gon’ be some space adventures as we’ll be playing Wrath and Glory which is set in the Warhammer 40k universe. There will be guns, some cyborgs, maybe some aliens? We’ll see.
But first, let’s meet the player characters:
Cayenne Pepper (played by @fuzzybooks), a rogue trader of the Pepper dynasty, spice merchants. Being only the 75th cousin in line of the head of the family, she’s mostly safe from assassination attempts. Got herself a nifty little space ship called Santa Maria.
Gorm Oddmundson (@raddigested) is a Space Wolf scout. This little cub is far away from home and for some reason without his pack. He is looking for that good, good glory.
Gimlet (@xxyumeganxx) in an ex-inquisitonal acolyte. Having left the inquisition after some inside trouble he now is roped into looking after a newly awakened psyker Saef.
Saef (@arctic-urpo) was a ganger until his whole gang got wiped out of existence in an unfortunate event he doesn’t want to talk about. Now he is a psyker and has wanders the world with Gimlet as to stay out of trouble.
Our party of heroes have arrived in the Adeptus Mechanicus controlled Forge World of Triplex Phall, located in the Eastern fringes of the Empire to meet with a tech priest.
The Pepper family wishes to strengthen their bonds with the Tech Cult, so they have agreed to take on some work for them to gain some favors.
Cayenne Pepper has been ordered to do this job, and ahse has taken Saef and Gimlet, new hirings to the ships precisely for this with her.
Gorm is here because the Pepper family has ties to the Space Wolves, and Cayenne decided having one could be useful.
The tech priest is not currently in his room, so our heroes are told to wait, and wait they do.
Gorm introduces himself to everyone, and asks for everyone’s names and comments on Saef’s nice pants!
He also asks why everyone is here on this mission: Cayenne’s answer is business, Saef is just following orders and Gimlet admits on being interested in the Mechanicus.
Gorm takes this moment to wax poetry about his home-world of Fenris. Aah, Fenris, its icy peaks and glaciers are beauty incarnate!
They talk among themselves about what to expect, the tech priest’s ad hadn’t been exactly specific.
Gimlet says he has heard there might be Inquisition agents on the planet they’re heading.
Gorm comments that he hasn’t much experience with Inquisitors as he has never met one and Gimlet says that he hasn’t either.
Gimlet talks about wanting to know history especially related to the AdMech. He also seems to be curious in this particular tech priest that has hired them.
Gorm asks if Gimlet is the writing type, as he is in need of a person to write down his glorious adventures!
Cayenne tells about the galas that her family does, helping orphaned animals.
Gorm asks if there’s any pets on board her ship.
She says yes, some cats and dogs. There’s also an indoor park and a shark tank!
Gorm says he isn’t much of a cat person himself. Definitely more of a dog person.
Gorm takes this moment to relay the tale of his childhood, where he was thrown into the sea, swam to find a kraken who raised him. Hence why he is called the “Child of the Kraken”.
This lovely tale is barely finished when the tech priest arrives. Much like the rest of his kin, he is rather haphazardly put-together figure with several extra limbs and eyes.
He leads our heroes to his lair, a tower-like room filled with shelves and computer screens.
There’s also a cream-colored cat that jumps onto the priest’s shoulder.
The tech priest shakes Cayenne’s hand with the hand that still appears to have some skin left on it, even still it’s cold and unpleasant.
He introduces himself as E-E \ 821.
Now onto the mission at hand.
A four person group of Mechanicus has disappeared on a mission in the planet Styria R867, led by E-E \ 821′s sergeant K303 2:82. The tech priest wishes them to be found.
The planet itself is a curious thing, it is unreachable for hundreds of years at a time, because of a storm and only comes out of it for 10 years at a time. Even then it is incredibly hostile as far as living there goes, but it does host a small population of human settlers, who mostly do mining.
The Imperium presence on the planet is really sparse, there’s members of Ministorum on the planet but not much else.
There used to be some kind of ancient civilization there, and the storm occasionally uncovers ruins.
The Mechanicus went to the planet to survey the ruins to see if there’s a need for the Mechanicus to ready a bigger mission, and to possibly find the origin of the storm so that the Imperium could use it better.
There is a settlement of Hellhole, where the Mechanicus were last seen. A Sister of Battle resides there, and she could be useful informant.
If the Mechanicus are dead, a data disk must be retrieved from the Sergeant’s body, that is the condition in which our heroes are paid for their services.
The tech priest is very fond of swerving questions by asking clarifying questions and then answering those instead of the first question, but our heroes still get a lot of information.
Cayenne asks for something to show the Mechanicus to show that our heroes are authorized by their commander.
E-E \ 821 gives her a badge of the Mechanicus symbol with some damage on it.
They leave. Gorm doesn’t take his eyes off the cat, because he is suspicious, and just before the doors’ to the lair close he sees the tech priest give the cat a little pat on the head with his mechanical claw hand.
Before getting too far, Gorm has one more thing that he wishes from the tech priest, so they return.
Gorm wishes to have something with the sergeant’s smell on it.
As the tech priest starts climbing up his tower to find something that fits the description, his cat decides to take this moment to jump down in front of Gorm.
Despite Gorm showing no inclination for playfulness, the cat seems to be ready to play.
Gorm asks someone to get rid of the cat before he loses it.
Gimlet swoops in and attempts to befriend the cat, but she gets scared, smacks him on the hand and finds safety on Gorm’s shoulders.
Luckily before Gorm wolfs out, the tech priest returns, gently swoops up the cat and places it back on his shoulders.
For Gorm, the tech priest hands out the sergeant’s undershirt.
Gorm and Gimlet make a hasty retreat before the cat can do anything else bad, while Cayenne and Saef stay to say proper goodbyes.
Gorm says bye from the other end of the hallway, and the tech priest opens up a speaker right next to him to bid him goodbye.
After leaving, they talk a bit in the hallway, Gorm comments on having difficulty with robot-people.
Cayenne says eye-contact is important and instructs him to pick an eye and stick to it.
Then it’s off to Styria R867!
Cayenne has her servo-skull to give a tour of the ship to the other three.
Gorm takes Saef to the tax-free shop to pick out moomin mugs for themselves.
While there he comments that he has heard good things about Saef’s gang, and he wishes to be Saef’s gang friend.
Saef doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about this, but he mutters a “sure” and keeps on looking at the mugs.
Gorm asks if they should ask the other people to be in the gang as well, but Saef says he should take care of recruitment.
Then the last bit of business is deciding whether to be a violent or non-violent gang.
Saef says he’s alright as long as he gets to fight, which sounds pretty violent.
As Santa Maria has warp travel capabilities it doesn’t take our heroes long to get to Styria R867.
They get teleported on the surface of the planet little ways away from Hellhole. And immediately get attacked by three scorpions. (as one occasionally does)
Gimlet immediately gets face-full of poison from a stinger shot. Gorm rushes that scorpion and gets a hit in with his cool-ass chain-sword.
Gimlet retreats a bit and takes care of the poison before anything else.
One of the scorpions attacks Gorm, but can’t get through his armor.
Cayenne takes a shot with her plasma gun, absolutely annihilating the third remaining. Unfortunately her gun jams.
Saef takes this moment to show off his psyker powers, smiting one of the scorpions.
Gorm finishes one of the remaining ones and Gimlet shoots down the last into bits.
Gorm turns around and demands to know which one of our group is a psyker.
Saef rises his hand and Gorm tells that he doesn’t appreciate magic.
I guess that’s it for their awesome little gang.
Cayenne gets a bunch of unhelpful comments about her weapon such as, try turning it on and off again (Gimlet) and smash it against a rock (Gorm).
She knows her way around a plasma weapon however, and cleans it up no problem.
There is no more incidents as our heroes reach the settlement of Hellhole. Situated against the mountain they are mining in, the settlement consists of houses made out of mis-matched metal plates. There’s an AdMech ship parked on the front.
A woman clad in the black-and-white armor of the Sisters of Battle comes to meet up with them and introduces herself as Portia Bailey.
Upon hearing our heroes want to discuss the missing mechs, she suggests they do so in her house (well, more of a shack).
Sister Portia is a bit of a rambler, veering off-topic quite often, but from what our heroes can gather, the Mechanicus went to a ruined castle on the other side of the mountain.
Sister Portia has been to the castle before, but it was filled with traps and generally unsafe, she tried to warn the Mechanicus of this as well, even saying she could come with, but the Mechanicus were rather secretive.
In fact only the sergeant (or as Sister Portia says, the weird horse-legged one) did talking, the rest communicated among themselves in sign language.
After the Mechanicus left and weren’t heard from again, Sister Portia went to check the castle and noticed that the ancient machines in the castle were powered up again and the giant doors to the castle were locked up tight.
Sister Portia knocked but no answer.
She surmises that maybe the Mechanicus just wanted a castle, but admits that she has no real proof they are still alive.
She suggests our heroes travel to the castle at night, as they are less likely to be attacked by beasts as the nights still get cold-ish around here.
Plus they could catch glimpses of movement in the castle.
Before leaving the Mechanicus’ ship is there, although locked.
Sister Portia says she’ll look the other way if our heroes want to take a look. Which they do.
Before they can get to the ship, they are stopped by two kids, Layla (11), who is really interested in big Space Marine man (Gorm lets her hold his chain-sword) and Laurel (8), who asks about the big ship in the space.
Their mother calls them away before they can waste too much of our heroes’ time.
Gorm breaks the lock on the Mechanicus ship, and our heroes take a look around.
Cayenne looks over the sergeant’s room, and finds a data pad where the captain’s logs are generally kept, but she can’t crack the code of it. She still takes it with.
Saef goes over the other people’s living areas and notes that they are bereft of any signs of living or personal belongings.
Gimlet takes the bridge, and extracts the black box of the ship, but he has no tools to listen to the recordings inside.
Gorm checks over the cargo bay, and notes that the Mechanicus, especially the Sergeant appear to be extremely well-armed.
He also finds a device for listening to black box recordings. So that’s what they do next.
They pick the latest recording; the only speaker appears to be the sergeant, who admits to some uncertainty about the situation, saying he hopes “that Eden is right”. His musing are interrupted by something and he laughs and reprimands someone named Tora for their (sign) language. He then notes that it’s best that he does the talking while the rest can communicate via sign language.
There’s few oddities on the recording.
Gorm is convinced something is up with the sign language and wishes they could have visual recordings of the Mechanicus.
(also we found out both Gimlet and Cayenne know the basics of sign language, though very specialized language only)
Gimlet notes that it is odd for the Mechancius to laugh, as they pride themselves in getting rid of their humane qualities.
Cayenne noticed the two names spoken, Eden and Tora, neither of which appear in anyway in their mission statements.
Gimlet suggests they could maybe ask the kids about anything odd the Mechanicus might have done while here, and everyone thinks it’s a good idea.
They find the kids in the mesh hall with their mother, who doesn’t want to talk about the Mechanicus.
Gorm tries to persuade the mother to come with her outside but only manages to her to clamp up even more.
Gimlet asks her to get them some food, which she agrees to, buying our heroes few moments with the kids.
Laurel, the boy, whispers what he knows into Cayenne’s ears. Apparently he had caught a glimpse of some of the non-sergeant Mechanicus without their hoods/helmets and he says they had pieces missing on their faces.
When they noticed Laurel they got really angry, and he ran away, which Cayenne says was a smart move.
And that’s enough information gathering for one day. Next time our heroes start heading for the castle! What mysteries will await them there? We’ll see.
