#albanus

[kaitalakki]

Sketch sketch sketch sketching.

[charoftheweek]

The First Rescue, Part 2

Vincent knew the Emperor's Children marine would not take kindly to healing him with biomancy due to seeing it as a form of taint. But honestly with what he knew of them before the heresy, he was aware he'd have to nudge the marine away from perfection and towards excellence so as to ensure he would not fall to chaos due to his vanity. He came from a point of understanding regarding physical perfection, having practiced such himself, but he would do his best to try and nudge them towards healthier expressions of both mastery of combat prowess and physical perfection. That is, after he rescued the male. 

When he arrived at the first blast zone shortly after it occurred, Vincent was in awe at the sheer devastation the suicide bomber had inflicted onto the squad. Most members of the squad were already dead, of wounds so severe that even Vincent could not save them, but upon laying his eyes on Albanus, he knew what he needed to do. For his part, the male could hardly protest, barely being able to move as is, but he did inquire, "Who are you?" 

"Vincent. I'll explain later," he remarks, picking up the male with his biomancy and taking him through a warp portal to the present time. All this happened before the marine's anger at being exposed to such taint had time to be made manifest, but as the marine saw himself in an unfamiliar medical bay his rage made itself manifest.

The marine started to lash out in his weakened state as he berated Vincent with "How could you?! Your actions have ruined any poss--" before breaking down into wounded coughs. 

Vincent winced as he felt the blows but set him down on a table where the medical staff started to restrain him. He knew when talking to someone as angry as this they were bound to have trouble listening to reason, so he kept his message short. "Excellence not perfection," he remarks. 

"All the effort I put in--"

Vincent interrupts with: "Leads to excellence."

"But I lost the chance--" 

"To reach the unattainable?" 

"Urg! I did not wish to be tainted l--"

"Did you wish I hadn't healed you?" 

Albanus huffs. "Fine! Heal me and then let me go!" 

He coughs a bit as Vincent starts to heal him fully, but makes no move to undo the restraints. "I can hardly wait to see how my legion will treat you for this offense," he remarks, glaring at the male. 

"Your legion has turned traitor." 

"What?!" 

"You heard me. You have nowhere to go back to." 

Albanus' eyes widen before he jerks his chin up. "That is a grievous insult to my chapter's name!" 

"Wave it around and nobody will trust you. Except for me and my crew. We know the story of what happened so long ago." 

Albanus glares at the male, a little softer now. "Are you a heretic?" 

"No, and I've got proof," Vincent remarks.

After a long discussion and demonstration of said proof later, Albanus still distrusted the male, but it was subtle and small enough he was released from his restraints. He inquires, "How long was I out?" 

"10 millenia." Albanus stares at him in shock. "Don't worry I'll make sure that you get adjusted to this new time period." 

"How?" Albanus asks skeptically.

"Me and Hotephas will fill you in on what happened during the interim." 

"What of my chapter's teachings and training?" 

"You can continue practicing them, but given what I know of your legion, I feel it best if you strive for excellence rather than perfection." 

"Why is it you suggest that?" 

"Because pursuit of perfection led your legion into depravity, whereas pursuit of excellence, which is naturally obtained by seeking perfection, is something I feel you can both manage and is much less likely to lead to you turning traitor." 

Albanus sighs and nods. "You are right. It is not as if perfection is available to me any longer either," he remarks somberly. 

"Was it to begin with?" 

He thinks to himself before sighing sadly, "No." 

He lets the male think to himself, putting a comforting arm on his shoulder, to which Albanus picked it up and set it back down after a moment. "Why are you going out of your way to do this for me?"

"Because I've always been a father to my men, but events have transpired such that I, like you, am without a chapter of my own..." Vincent smiles bittersweetly at that. 

Albanus glances at Vincent, meeting his gaze. "That is not the full story," he remarks. 

"No it is not... I seek companionship to ease the heartbreak of losing my chapter, and I was hoping I might be able to get some with you." 

Albanus looks away, lifting his chin up slightly. "You have a long way to go for that." Vincent's smile drops. "But I am willing to trust that you and your crew will help me find my way within this new millenium." Vincent smiles once more at this. 

"Also, if you are capable of treating me with standard medical procedures," Albanus starts. 

"I am." 

"I would strongly prefer you use those to heal me in the future." 

"Can do." 

[charoftheweek]

The First Rescue, Part 1

(Given recent events I do not feel this will get out via RP, but I figured it was worth posting nonetheless.)

Around a week ago, Vincent had an idea brewing in the back of his head. If one preheresy marine from his time had been found and successfully be reintegrated into the Imperium under his command, perhaps he might be able to bring back another? He would have to be careful--he was well aware of the dangers of messing with time--but it would theoretically be possible for him to travel back in time via warp portals and then return with a marine in tow. To reduce the risk of this having an impact on the timeline, he decided to only save those marines that would have been left to die, too wounded to be saved by any other means than his biomancy. In this way, pulling them from the past would mean that nothing of note would be changed. 

Problem was finding where and when there might be preheresy marines that have died off without messing the timeline up too much. Here in the present, Vincent struggled to find detailed accounts of where the various legions deployed and the various battles they undertook, and all too often when he did find information, it was too general to be of any real use. "Legion ? fought enemy ? ferociously on the planet of ???, losing scores of warriors in the process" simply didn't cut it for him, he needed the kind of detail that might go into a tactical report. Problem was, he didn't have access to many of those. 

Indeed, the only truly useful information he found was that he collected regarding his own chapter. He poured over this information, looking for events that he may be able to recover a battle brother from with little to no consequence, before the legion started showing signs of turning traitor. He found what he was looking for, but not in the way he had expected, in an account of joint forces operation between the Emperor's Children and the Thousand Sons to purge what would today be called chaos cultists. An unconventional grouping where neither force alone was big enough to undertake the task, and where both sides did not particularly like the other, Vincent noted that this particular event remained a point of contention for the two legions long after it occurred. 

But that mattered little to him at the present. What mattered was how the events went down. First it started off with an impressive amount of excruciating planning down to the last detail, a plan of such magnificence worthy of that of a Primarch, even if the two legion's methods of planning disagreed. The Emperor's Children would go down and eliminate the positions definitively held by cultists, while the Thousand Sons would use their guile and adaptability to flush out the suspected locations of cultists. Neither legion expected much resistance given the cultists were primarily armed with autoguns and stubguns. But neither of them expected the suicide bombers. 

Loaded with enough explosives, improvised or otherwise, to take the  marines down with them, the first and most devastating of these suicide bombers took out an entire heavy support squad of Emperor's Children with the sheer size of their ordanance, 9 of the marines either being killed outright with wounds even a Marine could not survive. It did not mention what happened to the tenth, presumed MIA. Vincent felt that perhaps he had found what he was looking for here, but also a tinge of disappointment in that it wasn't a member of the Thousand Sons. And so he kept reading, but the casualties of the other squads were not as great as the marines started to realize what was going on, and there was the significant chance one of them would spot him if he were to try and save one of their members. So, a tad reluctantly, he decided to check on what happened with the heavy support squad. 

[avleria]

Albanus by Bruno Girin on Flickr.