[M] Warhammer 40K: The Replicants - recruitment and OOC

[Azazeal849]

Rated M for distressing situations, violence, and potential language and drug references.

Link to IC

Spoiler: Prologue 

THE REPLICANTS

From the surface of Vitaris, the distant sun took on the hard, pale milkiness of a cataracted eye, blinded by the dust storms that periodically scoured the surface. The world might have been habitable 70 million years ago, before the solar wind flensed away a critical volume of its atmosphere and left its surface water to gradually sublimate away into space. Now the dessicated husk of the world lay as a skeletal landscape of basalt and granite, under a thick layer of pumice dust. The finer particles drifted in a cloying layer near the ground, forming a shroud over the dead world.

The funereal silence was disturbed as a figure burst through the dust curtain, running awkwardly in his black exo-suit. His limping, staggering run was partly due to the dead world's high gravity, and partly due to the limp body of a second figure that he was carrying in his arms, this one suited in dark red. The runner was making for the blocky, angular shape of a mechanicus lander that lay in the centre of the ash plain, standing out against the grey with its hull liveried in the same weathered red as the runner's comrade. The grinning half-bionic skull on the lander's side swung down towards him as a boarding ramp lowered.

"Noyer?" asked a man in a black jumpsuit as the runner staggered through the inner airlock, "What happened?"

The runner wiped a film of dust from his visor with a gloved hand, revealing dark eyes and a lantern jaw that was shadowed with stubble despite recent shaving.

"We have to go." he said as he dropped the other figure onto the steel-plated deck, "We have to lift off and get out of here now!"

The red-suited figure lay unmoving on the floor. The helmet's visor had been smashed and left open to the thin, unbreathable atmosphere outside. Behind the splintered polycarbonate was the face of a middle-aged woman, pale-faced and blue-lipped from asphyxiation. One eye was a blue-lensed bionic; the other was dark brown and widened in abject horror. A half-suited man in the same red as the dead woman fell to his knees beside her, his own augmetics clicking and whirring.

"Omnissiah's truth!" he cursed, "What happened to Briseis?"

"The cave." Noyer gasped, snapping his helmet seals and wrenching it off his head in a hiss of venting air pressure. His black hair was plastered down with sweat. "A pyramid, some kind of guard tower, xenotech..."

The man on the floor traced a circle on his chest, marking the the cog-sign to ward off the evil of Noyer's words. The man in black signed the Aquila in an Imperial equivalent, but for a different reason. As a PDF Aeronautica veteran, Group Captain Conrad Noyer was normally unflappable. To see their mission commander so visibly rattled didn't bode well for any of them.

"It fired some kind of green lightning bolt at us." Noyer finished, becoming slightly calmer as he caught his breath, "It hit adept De Reuter in the face. There wasn't anything I could do. But this planet's not dead - we need to get back to Venatora and tell the governor."

"I'll tell Krichbaum to fire up the engines." the man in black said at once.

"What about Briseis' equipment?" said the man in red, still kneeling beside the dead tech-priestess, "What about the servitors?"

"Frak the servitors, Farrier!" the man in black said savagely, "We have to get out of here now!"

The tech adept called Farrier didn't answer - instead he pulled his helmet from the mag-lock at his belt, donned it, and pushed past Noyer into the airlock before anyone could stop him.

"Farrier!" both Noyer and the man in black shouted. The man in black slammed his palm against the inner door as the locks thunked shut and the airlock began to cycle, unable to follow without a void-suit of his own. "Frakking cogboys!"

Adept Farrier ran as fast as he could through the haze of dust, relying on the auspex mounted to his suit's forearm to guide his way. He whispered praise to the machine as its locator pings cut through the murk in a way his flawed organic eyes could not. Noyer and Vega didn't understand - that much was clear from their protests across the vox until he deliberately shut it off. The vat-grown servitors that they had sent out to set up a perimeter, though valuable, were ultimately expendable. De Reuter's equipment, as a holy instrument of the Machine God, was not.

He followed the signal, the same signal that they had been sent all this way to investigate. It had started beaming out across the void two weeks ago, just as the planets of Venatora and Vitaris were approaching opposition. Here, on the surface of Vitaris, it almost swamped his auspex with its increased strength. He downtuned the device to compensate and retraced his fellow explorators' steps. When he found himself approaching a cave, like a black gash in the wall of the canyon that described their landing site, he knew he was on the right track.

It was dark inside the cave, but Farrier didn't reach up to activate the torch mounted on the side of his helmet. A faint green glow was already pulsing from the tunnel ahead of him. Adept Farrier was not sufficiently augmented as to be immune to fear, but he swallowed hard and continued. To wilfully leave the Omnissiah's gifts behind on this forsaken world would be worse than letting his own organic form perish.

He felt something crunch under his boot, although the only sound he could hear was his own quiet breathing amplified within the confines of his helmet. He looked down. Plastic shards, from a void-suit visor. This must be where adept De Reuter had been hit, Omnissiah rest her soul. He didn't see the significance of the jagged piece of rock that had been dropped nearby. He did, however, see the silver box of surveying equipment, stamped with the skull and cog of the mechanicus, that lay just ten metres ahead of him.

"Thank the Omnissiah..." the young adept breathed as he ran forward to pick it up, his unaugmented arms struggling with the weight in the higher gravity. And then he raised his head as he registered the widening of the tunnel ahead of him, and the cavern beyond from which the green light came.

The source of the glow was a sharp-sided pyramid rising out of the basalt ground, almost like a spike that had thrust up through the floor. Whereas the cavern floor was dull grey and covered in irregularities that were thrown into relief by the green light, the pyramid was smooth and glossy black, almost like obsidian. The surface was covered in grooves through which liquid light seemed to flow, pulsing upwards in green channels. Farrier didn't even notice that his auspex had overloaded and shut down. His eyes were fixed on the pyramid and what lay beneath it - a prone figure with smoke rising from its torn black void-suit.

+ + + + + +

"There he is." Vega said as the external cameras picked out adept Farrier's heat signature running back towards the lander. "Frak sake."

"I'll get him." Noyer offered, moving back through the cramped interior towards the airlock. Vega followed. The inner door opened as the two men reached it, to reveal Farrier with De Reuter's case in one hand and a laspistol in the other, the latter aimed squarely at Group Captain Noyer.

"Get away from him!" the tech adept shouted in warning, "That's not Noyer!"

"What are you...?" was as far as Noyer got before Farrier shot him three times through the chest.

"Farrier!" Vega yelled out, "Krichbaum! Get a medikit!"

Vega's hand clawed for his own sidearm, but he was outdrawn. By Noyer.

The shot mission commander unholstered the las weapon strapped to the leg of his exo-suit and fired in the blink of an eye, hurling Farrier back against the airlock door. The tech adept gasped, his pistol clattering to the ground from his nerveless fingers. As he slid down the door, a faint green light began to pulse, reflecting off the grey plasteel. The light was emanating from Noyer as the Group Captain slowly straightened.

"Commander?" Vega asked hesitantly. The confusion in his eyes was just beginning to curdle into suspicion when Noyer's second lasbolt hit him in the forehead, splitting his skull open with the overpressure of vaporised brain matter. When Krichbaum belatedly came running with a medipack in her hands, Noyer shot her too. Now alone in the lander, the Group Captain looked around. A crackle of green lightning sparked across his eyes.

Hi everybody, and welcome to my second attempt at GMing on RPA. This story takes places within an existing continuity (that of SandQueen's A Wash Of Black series) but is set several years earlier and is not related to the original storyline. As such, characters old and new are both welcome.

RULES

You all know the standard RPA rules so I won't repeat them here, but there are a couple of my own that I'd like to add.

• Please write all IC posts in third person past tense. That is, "John stood up", never "John stands up" or "I stood up".
• If you're including another player's text to help put your IC posts in context, please indicate it with a different colour; please don't use quote boxes in the IC.
• Please leave a message in the OOC thread if you're going to be away for a while. If you run out of inspiration and want to quit that's also fine, but please have the courtesy to let us know that you're leaving so that other players aren't left waiting around for you.

RP BACKGROUND

Venatora is an unremarkable system in the Ixaniad sector, Segmentum Obscuras, named after its single habitable planet. The planet itself is a heavily populated Civilised World with healthy trade links to the neighbouring Daargard system and the rather more distant Solomon. It is mostly famous for a bloody war fought in early M37, in which a Necron tomb awakened from the core of the planet's single moon. The highly-advanced xenos quickly overran the lunar outposts and mounted attacks on the planet below. Despite heavy losses, the PDF was able to hold the line until reinforcements arrived from Daargard. When they appeared they were unexpectedly joined by an Eldar fleet, believed to originate from craftworld Kaelor. Though unexpected and uninvited, the Eldar assisted the Imperial Navy in bombing Venatora's moon into gravel, reducing it to the series of rings that now orbit the planet in its place. The great victory over the surviving Necrons that followed is celebrated on Venatora to this day. Naturally, the histories omit the involvement of the alien Eldar, and the catastrophic climate changes that were only mitigated by the Adeptus Mechanicus deploying massive grav-anchor stations in orbit around the planet.

Venatora's current tithe grade is Exactis Prima, and as well as the periodic Imperial Guard levy it exports foodstuffs, minerals, and machinery from the many Ad Mech foundries present in the major cities. The current planetary regent of Venatora is governor Malachi Faroven.

Spoiler: Governor Faroven 

Age: 69 Venatoran, 75 Terran standard (juvenat assisted)
Rank: Planetary governor
Profile: Governor Faroven is known for being decisive, confident, and good at managing the disparate and labyrinthine departments of Imperial bureaucracy. As near as the Administratum can determine, he is a competent and diligent servant of the Emperor.

Your characters are inquisition agents in the employ of inquisitor lord Immanuel Sidonis. Sidonis commands a truly monolithic staff with agents and support personnel active across several sub-sectors, and your character is unlikely to have met him in person. They may however be familiar with some of his subordinates, such as field agent Lawrence Van Der Mir and chief logistician McKenzie von Rousch.

In the present day (605.M41, six months after the highly-classified Pembroke Incident) your characters are part of a team dispatched to Venatora as part of one of Sidonis' many ongoing operations in the sector: an investigation into the illegal trafficking of alien artefacts. Venatora is one of several worlds the xenotech dealer has been known to frequent and the team have been placed there for a pre-emptive sting operation, managed from afar by one of lord Sidonis' senior agents, interrogator Javid Schafer. Your characters will know Schafer (though not necessarily well), having worked with him before.

Spoiler: Interrogator Javid Schafer 

Age: 41 Terran standard, 76 by the calendar of his homeworld of Spartax (which earns him the nickname "old man" behind his back)
Rank: Interrogator
Profile: Javid is a dynamic and task-focused man, and he looks to inspire these traits in his subordinates. Although sometimes impatient and blunt to the point of rudeness, he has a deserved reputation as a man who gets things done.

It is a relatively low risk and low priority assignment, but things changed dramatically a couple of weeks ago when orbital relay stations picked up a mysterious signal, emanating from Venatora's supposedly dead sister planet Vitaris. Governor Faroven responded quickly, organising a joint venture with the Ad Mech to send a small explorator mission to investigate the source of the signal. The leader of the team was Aeronautica group captain Conrad Noyer.

Spoiler: Group Captain Noyer 

Age: 28 Venatoran, 31 Terran standard
Rank: PDF Aeronautica group captain
Profile: With several thousand hours of flight time each in both atmospheric and void craft, and a reputation for being ice-cool under pressure, group captain Noyer was a natural choice to command the mission.

When inquisitor Sidonis and his staff heard about this, they immediately took notice. Suspecting some kind of Necron resurgence, Sidonis dispatched interrogator Schafer to take command of his personnel already on Venatora. He wants the explorator team thoroughly debriefed by his own organisation before any report is made to the planetary authorities.

Spoiler: Suggested character profile 

As always, this is a guideline rather than something to be rigidly adhered to.

Name: Self explanatory.
Age: Ditto.
Position / rank: What their job is in the inquisitor lord's staff.
Appearance: Pictures and/or descriptions are acceptable. I encourage you to also describe the character in one of your early IC posts, as this will help establish the character in the other players' minds.
Personality: A few points is fine. This is more something to refer back to to help you stay in character rather than a substitute for showing what they're like IC.
Weapons: If carried.
Other: Equipment, armour, psyker powers etc.
Background: Less is more, and feel free to mention bits of it in the IC as well as here. If you don't think there's any point in mentioning a specific bit of your character's history in the IC, then it probably isn't vital to their personality or the story. Also, revealing a character's history over time in the IC is fun, and in my experience has a greater chance of the other players remembering the important details.

TEAM

Field agent Marcus Black
Field agent Kally Sonder (Dakkagor)
Field agent Vincent Nyl (Felwether)
Sanctioned psyker John Shere (Dough Guy)
Sanctioned psyker Lia (Kardar233)
Stormtrooper Julianus Remus, TFC (Jarms48)
Sister Sapphira (PaintSerf)
Ad mech liaison Vizkop (Atrum Daemon)
PDF liaison Mattius Attelus (Simulacrum)
Xenologist Fredriq L'Hoace (Childsouldier)
Verispex agent Kelly Black

[Cfavano]

By the Emperor...ANOTHER one?

[Azazeal849]

Yes, another one. In no way competing though - this will be a very different concept and style to A New Chapter.

[Cfavano]

there's a third one in the parody/fanfic section too, I think.

[Jarms48]

By the Emperor...ANOTHER one?

This just isn't any other one, this is an Azazeal one! Will read through the premise and will draft a character when I have some free time at work.

[Cfavano]

now that everyone's doing it it's not cool anymore

[PaintSerf]

now that everyone's doing it it's not cool anymore

Azazeal’s been working on this one for a while. In my experience with his RPs the effort and time has been very well spent.

Also, Hurrah! Back to GrimDark we go!

[Moe]

Excellent! There is no rivalry on these boards we are here to have fun and enjoy the vast warhammer and warhammer 40k universe. I plan on joining if you will take me.

Also if you have an idea for some art work I would be happy to do some for you, I did my signature for my thread, only took me a day or so.

[Azazeal849]

This just isn't any other one, this is an Azazeal one! Will read through the premise and will draft a character when I have some free time at work.

Haha, thanks for the vote of confidence Jarms. Glad to have you on board once again.

Azazeal’s been working on this one for a while. In my experience with his RPs the effort and time has been very well spent.

You're giving me too much credit PaintSerf; it's always my fellow writers that are the lifeblood of my RPs.

This one won't base the story around ethical issues like The Lesser Evil or Business Is War did - it'll essentially be a straight thriller like Eclipsis. That said, since it's part of a series, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a bit of character study.

Excellent! There is no rivalry on these boards we are here to have fun and enjoy the vast warhammer and warhammer 40k universe. I plan on joining if you will take me.

Also if you have an idea for some art work I would be happy to do some for you, I did my signature for my thread, only took me a day or so.

I'd be happy to have you, Moe, and thanks for the offer - I did have a cover picture in mind already (see my sig) but if you want to knock together something with some grim-looking inquisition agents and/or some sinister characters with green lightning in their eyes I'd definitely take a look at it.

[Jarms48]

[*Ordos Xenos; Imperial Inquisition;*]
[*Personnel Request;*]
[*Storm Trooper;*]
[*Remus, Julianus*]

Name: Julianus Remus
Age: 48 Terran Years
Position: Inquisitorial Storm Trooper

Active* Siblings:
- Inquisitor Chrysanta Remus, deployed on Inquisitorial runs across outlying Imperial Sectors.
- Sororitas Hospitalar Roxanna Remus, deployed on Gravio II. Tending to victims of recent viral outbreak, under the banner of the Sisters of the Sacred Watch.
- Commissar Aeton Remus, allocated to 156th Corilithian Infantry Regiment.
- Colonel Balios Remus, commanding officer of 627th Corilithian Armoured Regiment.

* Note these reports detail latest generation of family Remus, for retired personnel or extended family of similar generation please search out a Scribe of the Ordos:
- (Deceased) Kephas Remus, former commander of 156th Corilithian Infantry Regiment.
- (Infant) Solon Remus, currently undergoing Schola Progenium conditioning.

Personality:
- Gruff
- Stern
- Loyal
- Questioning

Weapons:
- Hotshot lasrifle
- Hotshot pistol
- Combat knife
- 2 Fragment grenades
- 2 Bright grenades
- 1 Melta bomb

Equipment:
- Carapace armour: Typical armour kit, forged from plates of armaplas fashioned into a complete suit. Forge world stamp of the Seventh planted on the middle of back neck ring, Inquisitorial -I- displayed on right shoulder guard and upper left chest;

- Matching helmet: Armaplas ballistic helmet, with attached targeter and secondary helmet lamp powered by an independent battery or miniature motor. An Imperial eagle is stamped upon the front, along with a manufactorum stamp of the Seventh imprinted underneath at the top of the dome.

- Rebreather mask: Polymer visor is capable of several visual modes including, night vision and thermal. Visor is capable of tinting in the event of blinding lights , it is powered by an independent battery or motor mounted at the back of the helmet;

- Auspex: Electronically accessed in Remus' visor optics, this simple device displays a forward 90 degree cone which detects movement up to varying increments. These being 10, 20 or as far as 40 metres;

- Microbead: A small ear mounted communication device for short range communication between Inquisitorial team members or if required external sources - those being elements of local PDF, stationed Guard Regiments or militia forces. Upon the ear pieces mounting plate is the Manufactorum stamp of the Seventh.

- Tan fatigues: Typical operating uniform for the Inquisitorial militant, though camouflage patterns and standard kit are changed during assignment and operating theaters. Remus routinely swaps between standard uniform worn on base to that of white fatigues during assignment on planet Venatora


Background:
Julianus of the family Remus. A family of some renown its sons and daughters having a long standing tradition of attending the Schola Progenium becoming members of the Inquisition, the Commissariat, Adepta Sororitas or the Imperial Guard. For Julianus however he was destined to a life of duty to protect and provide security in the halls of the fortresses of the Inquisition. He has been allocated to several Inquisitors for numerous assignments, tasks which have led him to believe the result of all things falls to the cursed gods and leaving him suspect of rooting out cult activity wherever it be found.

He was born the sixth child of his generation, his older siblings often left him envious by their own successes or current positions of notably higher standard. His sisters, a Soroitas Hospitalar and a Ordo Xeno Inquisitor, the latter personally requesting his services to merely rub it in. Something that left him wondering if she ever truly grew up or how she even became an Inquisitor in the first place. His brothers two officers of the Guard and a Commissar; the oldest son a man who Julianus no longer considered his brother, having led to the death of another one of his older male siblings.

His home world, routinely called the First that being it is the capital of the Sector and coincidentally the first to be colonized by man. A high tech system at the back end of the universe, now at war with the Tau Empire as those young xenos continually attempt to expand their sphere. Julianus would have rather signed himself up to the Guard, fighting and dieing for his home, not here, not for family tradition on some far flung backwater he hadn't even heard of.

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