Savalos scans the crowded casino floor until his eyes alight upon one of the brass trolleys the hospitality staff have wheeled out for the convenience of placing bets on the pending bloodshed. Taking two of the small scrips from the attendant, he pulls the plumed pen in close to his chest and hastily scribbles a warning for the outside team on the opposite side of the small parchment, thanking K'lei-eth in his thoughts for teaching him so much about the written word and language. Satisfied, he palms it, and then passes a second scrip, completed for a modest bet he still can't cover, and probably will never claim, back to the attendant.
Spotting Astrid Beij moving across the room, away from Leprade and Wardja, he moves in her direction, maintaining his facade by almost passing her, and then reaching out to grab another iced fruit drink from her tray. The arbitrator is good, easily palming the card and continuing on before discreetly passing it to one of Wardja's disguised arbitrator bodyguards. The man whispers something to Swinthosa and then excuses himself, moving toward the spiral stair.
Despite the building sense of peril at finding out the members of the surveillance team have been captured, the prominent players; Trizo, Leprade, and the Witch betray no sign that they have discovered anything amiss about the other acolytes in the Pearl or their counterparts.
Security test, straight success.
Surreptitiously lingering near some of the bodyguards from Trizo's group who have wandered closer to the fighting pit, Savalos watches them intently, particularly with regard to their comm activity, easily noting the cruel smirks and knowing glances they pass to one another. The few gloating exchanges he does make out from them while they are answering transmissions from their fellows confirm his worst fears, that the Yellobouros are responsible for the present fate of Hurchal, and perhaps the others.
"I would propose a wager to begin the evening, but I suspect this opening bout won't be much of a contest."
Play it cool... Yawn. This is sooo boring. A blatant mismatch. Oh I suppose I can make a wager if the odds are right.
I shrug indifferently at Leprade's suggestion. "Meh. What odds are offered? Feel free to pick your champion."
I finish my drink and wave at Beij to bring me another.
Leprade arches one eyebrow, seemingly surprised at the offer, as if he had been expecting a more conservative approach from the Skaelan-Har representative. Being given the choice of whom to pick leaves him somewhat incredulous.
"I feel, Comptroller Wimarc, in the interest of full disclosure and fairness, that I need to explain to you just whom Dohor the Harvester is in the somewhat convoluted hierarchy of the Vermillion Ring. While I myself am not one to fixate on the blood-sports, or place many wagers in that 'arena', so to speak, preferring instead games of skill, such as Heretic's Wake, even I know that there is only one possible outcome for the bout below. Dohor is something of legend amongst the fighting stables of the Ring, he has never lost a death-bout, even in grudge matches against his fellow gladiators."
Wardja can see the ruthless calculation veiled behind Leprade's eyes as he considers the possibilities.
"Since the outcome is a forgone conclusion, I have a chrono here, perhaps you would like to take odds against the amount of time that this poor unfortunate penitent will last in these most unenviable of circumstances?"
"A friendly wager, then. Do you still wish to allow me to pick my champion? I am amenable to either, if the stakes are governed by survival time and not a victor."
Wardja:
Wardja, currency in the Calixis sector is "Throne Gelt" which comes in as many forms as there are planets in the sector. On Oremor, throne gelt come in both a hard currency in the form of small, button sized gold-enameled coins of various sizes, denominations, and purity, and a credit based currency, preferred by the elites and trade groups for its portability in cred-wafers or electronic transactions.
A pittance for the 'comptroller' would be 100 gelt or so, a moderate wager closer to 1,000 and a sizable wager would be 10,000 or so. The 10,000 for someone of Wimarc's stature is really, almost a pittance, but he is considering the social etiquette/implications of the Intelligencer's estimated salary (considerably less than his) as well.
Nonchalantly I peer around the room as I sip some fruity drink. I try to get a mental layout of how security is set up, and look for a way to slip a note or card to one of our team who can slip out to warn the teams outside.
Sav, please make an Ordinary [+10] Awareness test, and also a Challenging [+0] Security test.
With the sting of Sgt. Einhardt's gaze still upon him, Savalos scans the Pinnacle's layout for a solution, any solution, to what is about to transpire in the pit below.
Based on the comments from Savalos, I'm assuming that nobody will be taking actions to interfere with what is about to occur below, so I will proceed. If you decide otherwise, there still will be ample opportunity to do so.
As Savalos turns away from Einhardt's glare, Swinthosa Wardja continues to engage in polite small-talk with Leprade, an increasingly difficult proposition given the nature of his disguise and the events that are even now transpiring below. Above, Uriah moves toward the ornate bounding rail for the balcony level to improve his own view, the rest of the gallery on the mezzanine level content to observe on the wide-view picters suspended on golden chains above their heads.
As the door hisses open at the bottom of the pit, Hurchal, falling back on his ingrained Guard training, takes a defensive stance, his broad, bruised face still somewhat baffled by his unexpected surroundings. A murmur rustles through the audience as the Gran Pallazzar's concierge speaks again.
"Feel no sympathy for the accused, the woeful penitent you see below has been given the opportunity of a lifetime, to throw off the shackles of his prior sins for a chance at immortality amongst the gladiators of the Vermillion Ring. Instead of serving his allotted life-sentence in the southern plantation colonies of Unduz, toiling for the rest of his days for his Guard overseers, the prisoner you see below has bravely elected to wager both his skill at arms and his life against one of the Ring's proven gladiators. If he is somehow victorious, he will earn a place in the Ring and absolution for his crimes, washed away with the blood he sheds. Of course, if he fails..."
As if on theatrical cue, the other door finishes opening, and a two-meter-tall behemoth of vat-grown muscle strides out, his tanned and oiled body covered in puckered scars and garish tattoos. He wears an enameled cuirass colored blood-red sporting the stylized, pitch-black "V" of the Gran Pallazzar's infamous bloodsport arena, a broad breechclout, and a brass helmet with a full face-mask that is perforated with dozens of circular holes. Great, curving maulchup's horns corkscrew out from either side of the helm, their tips pointed threateningly toward the wary guardsman. The brutal weapon he carries is easily a long as he is tall, and resembles a broad-bladed, double-headed scythe crafted of shining brass and steel. Even as you watch, the teeth on the bladed edges of the chain chit-sickle roar into life with a screech of metal-on-metal and a puff of black smoke from the exhaust ports on the hilt.
The excited anticipation from the crowd crests with a sustained applause at the sight of one of the Red Ring's most renowned gladiators, and the concierge plays upon this enthusiasm by lowering his voice dramatically and shouting the introduction that follows.
"Patrons and guests of the Pinnacle of Pearl, I present to you, Dohor the Harvester!!!"
The roar of the chain weapon is deafening, even in the deep pit below, and as the smell of the exhaust begins to waft upward to the ringing spectators, Leprade turns toward the "Skaelan-Har" comptroller to his right and quietly opines,
"I would propose a wager to begin the evening, but I suspect this opening bout won't be much of a contest."
Shortly after Vincent begins humming, almost muttering the strange song tunelessly to himself, Ryuk joins in, singing it in the same, lilting, melancholy way that the senior clerk remembers hearing it for the first time over his microbead---before it was drowned out by a buzzing chorus of flies.
For Ryuk, the words once taught to that other self on his birthworld of Dusk by the 'Ol Lady of the Swamps come to him almost instinctively, like a nursery tune taught to a child that could never be forgotten.
walkabout...walkabout...
In the evenin' in the shallows,
'touched man he walkin' the barrows,
third eye seein' what's beyon' the parted veil,
lonely watcher, he muss'n fail...
walkabout...walkabout...
Ryuk:
Against his will, she had made him what he is, what he was, and what he will be. Amid the kudzu and the cattails, deep in the bog, she had taught him the cant, showed him the warp and the weft of things, nurtured the black seed inside him until it grew like the twisted mangroves of his homeworld, above and below, above and below, decays and grows. She cackled as she drove his people away, named him fool for thinking he could deny what he was; that he was hers. When the Hag gave him the Sight it all changed. In a blur of half-remembered time she taught her pupil until he thought he could take no more of her learning, no more of her lore, he fought back, and she cackled, how she did cackle. Waking he was alone, free at last, unsure why. In time he tamed his madness, tamed the Gift in his own way, and so it was for awhile.
Then the Stern Man came. He came for him, saw his Gift, saw his Sight, and took him way on up to the sky and then the stars, showed him glorious things such as he had never seen...
...beauties, horrors, and everything in between, in a parade of years that changed him in ways he could never have imagined in his prior life. The Stern Man was at once a savior, a liberator, and a cold, uncompromising master; hero and villain in equal measure...
Ryuk begins to remember again. The other self, the he-not-he, it was the Stern Man who had bound it within him, the daemon, the gloating, jocular behemoth of filth and disease, the impossibly malign foe that they had somehow defeated together...the feeling of betrayal so deep it still lingered within him, little more than a fading echo in the soul that is at once his and not his, but nonetheless inherited by him.
He begins to feel a cold stirring of fear, followed by sentimental loyalty, and finally a simmering hatred, against all reason recognizing the stylized symbol of the Inquisition for what it is, though he is certain he had never seen it before this day in his imprisonment. The feelings are at once apart from him, and his own. Conflicting for both their intensity and inherent contradiction.
Then...and then...he had dropped him in this hole, dropped him in this black pit on another world, a place apart from his home, without the smells of mire and mud, or the the sounds of the zydeco and tzitzikas...
When Ryuk finishes his singing there is a faint tone from the small housing and mechanisms inside the vault-like portal unlock from within the nearby walls. With a sibilant hiss, dusty, long pent-up air escapes from within the once pressurized room behind the door as it slides almost seamlessly away into the wall like a book returned to its slipcase.
Vincent looks at the dusty display and sees the following:
Kaltos feels the strange cell rotate again, slowly, on its horizontally axis, before gradually coming to a halt. With a hiss, the recessed edge of the door slowly begins to open, but it does not reveal the path to escape he had hoped for, but instead a small, rounded alcove dimly lit from above.
Looking inside from where he sits, he can see a metal rack within that holds his monosword, staff, and knife. Draped over the rack is a suit of plain, black flak armor, emblazoned on both shoulder guards and the chest with a stylized, blood-red 'V'.
Savalos moves through the crowd of excited spire-dwellers with the practiced ease of a lifetime hive-ganger, until he reaches the slim velvet cordon that rings the pit. He glances across the yawning void to see the arbitrator, Swinthosa Wardja, in his own disguise, standing directly beside Leprade, engaged in casual conversation, sipping their drinks.
Looking below, his stomach drops. The pit is deep, with a cone-shaped drop to a circular floor at the bottom much larger than the opening the audience peers through, the lustrously smooth walls carved from the same nacreous material that comprises the rest of the Pinnacle. Picter-rigs ring the pit about five meters above the floor, casting their gaze on a featureless, pearlescent plane whose multi-colored hue reminds Savalos of the rainbow pattern created when oil forms a sheen on water. Nine void-grade vault doors ring the bottom of the arena-pit, and the fact that none of them has yet opened fills the milling press of spectators with a bated anticipation that manifests in mostly hissing whispers from such etiquette conscious personages.
Hospitality attendants in the liveried uniforms of the casino bustle about and begin wheeling large, brass-rimmed pict-viewers into place in various spots surrounding the arena-pit, granting even those on the periphery a view of what is to come. Savalos watches Einhardt position one into place nearby, his look of concern showing exactly what Sav is thinking; that this was not part of the arbitrator's briefings on what to expect.
A loud hum sounds from the pit below, drawing everyone's expectant attention, and one of the shining durasteel void doors slowly opens. A burly figure clad in black, undifferentiated flak armor steps out from the pool of shadow cautiously, clutching a fierce looking combat knife in one hand, and a deactivated chainsword in the other. His eyes wince from the bright lights above, and he stares in utter confusion at the press of elegantly dressed onlookers regarding him from ten meters above.
Savalos' stomach sinks.
He glances over at Einhardt and sees the sergeant first looking at the pict-screen that has zoomed in on the prospective Vermillion Ring gladiator's face. At first he shows disbelief, then a simmering anger begins to creep over his countenance. He looks over at Savalos, somehow maintaining his composure in the face of what he sees.
The burly man in the pit is his guardsman, Hurchal.
Another resounding hum sounds from below as the door directly across from the doomed guardsman begins to open.
Still trying to remain the perfect blank of emotion, Wardja groans inwardly in frustration, still uncertain if the Intelligencer is baiting him with his banter. There is something gravely unsettling about Trizo's witch, and he tries to ignore the disturbing sensation of a spidery hand caressing his mind as she passes.
The minty smoke of his freshly-lit lho becomes positively nauseating for a moment as they pass close by, and Wardja notes that many of the audience is following in the ganger's wake now, moving excitedly toward the center of the Pinnacle of Pearl's wide floor.
Looking at the velvet-ropes around the circular depression, the arbitrator at first wonders if this large area has somehow been reserved for the ganglord and the other folk are simply flocking to the spectacle, but this is soon dispelled as one of the Gran Pallazzar's senior gaming concierges mounts a low podium near the main table and speaks in a lisping, eloquent voice over the small brass laudhailer affixed to it.
"Gentlemen, ladies, welcome to the Pinnacle of Pearl! I hope that the refreshments and hospitality match your expectations and the exceptional refinements of your personal tastes. Please do not hesitate to prevail upon our hospitality staff for anything further that may be provided for you, should the need arise. Our glorious tournament is scheduled to begin in short order, but until such time, I direct your attentions to the center floor, where a glorious spectacle has been arranged for your diversion until such time as our tournament commences."
He gestures theatrically toward the cordoned portion of the floor, just as the recessed circular portion, a full seven meters in diameter, begins to slowly slide away laterally, the crescent edge of the one circle disappearing into the edge of the rest of the floor, creating the illusion of two planetary bodies occluding one another during an eclipse. A dark shaft opens below, and the well-heeled crowd gasps in excitement at what is revealed beneath their feet.
The concierge begins to speak again, his voice rising over the spreading murmurs of the assembled patrons.
"The Gran Pallazzar is proud to present a circus of true martial splendor, an epic struggle of life and death played out for your entertainment, with all of the attendant bloodshed you have come to expect from the glorious floor of the Vermillion Ring, for the first time, brought to you here, directly, in the Pinnacle of Pearl!"
The raucous applause is unexpected and drowns out Leprade's voice for a moment, and Wardja leans in to hear what he just said, as the corrupted arbitrator repeats himself.
"Well, well, it seems that a few surprises yet remain. Fear not, Comptroller Wimarc, only those condemned in the eyes of Emperor will serve as fodder for the gladiators. Let us hope they put on a good show for us."
Surprised by the witches sudden arrival, Uriah reacts quickly, somehow managing to shield his mind from the jagged, probing, emanations radiating outward from Trizo's pet psyker. Her presence, this close, is nearly overpowering, and he prays to the Emperor that he was successful in occluding his own psyche from her telepathic grasp.
From his higher vantage in the gallery above, he begins to notice that the patrons on the lower level of the Pinnacle of Pearl appear to matriculate away from Trizo dol Soulard's arrival. At first glance he believes it is just a natural reaction to the ganglord's intimidating presence and the disconcerting psychic miasma radiating from his witch. Despite the fact that the wealthy audience below has its fair share of eccentric and ecclectic personages, none of them compare to the new arrivals. He begins to reconsider as he watches the majority of the crowd coalescing near the cordoned-off portion of the floor below, around the circumference of the recessed circle. From here, it appears that the crowd below is jockeying for position around the empty space, rather than avoiding the ganger's retinue, as if expecting some spectacle.
Something about the way that Vincent says the word 'Inquisition' causes the fine hairs on the back of Ryuk's neck to stand up, and some element of his deepest, genetic memories begin to stir in an unsettling fashion.
This is even more pronounced when Launce says, "He's right, it is dangerous."
Launce gives Vincent a knowing look and allows him to examine the cogitator panel.
Vincent taps the dusty touchscreen, leaving pronounced fingerprints until he swipes away the grit remaining with his sleeve. The screen displays the following:
[INQUISITORIAL ACCESS ONLY +++ UPON PAIN OF DEATH]
The last thing Vincent expected to see on the antiquated terminal was his own name, but perhaps the second to last thing is the curious icon of a musical note that follows the demand for vox authorization.
Kaltos, sitting upon the floor of the strange cell, feels the floor shift violently beneath him as it rocks into motion again, ascending this time on a purely vertical axis.
From somewhere far above him he can hear the grinding of whatever tracked mechanicism moves the cell through space, and judging by the grating reverberations he feels throughout his prison, he intuits that his is not the only cell being moved in such a manner. His cogitator-assisted reasoning makes the logical leap that the cells are being transitioned incrementally, along a chain, comparable to a manufactorum's conveyance belt.
Although the massive Inquisitorial bulkhead proved a daunting obstacle, the lack of contingency power became its undoing when confronted with the resourcefulness of Vincent, the physical strength of Ryuk, and the technical acumen of Launce. Utilizing a combination of brute force, a small fusion torch on the tech-priest's utility mechadendrite, along with the senior clerk's near omniscient knowledge of the claustrum's architectural vulnerabilities, the massive, sealed door was parted, providing the companions with a meter wide breach to pass through.
Beyond, was the sterile mustiness of a long-sealed passageway, and darkness. Stablights found in a V-Block utility closet provided illumination and the three began their ascent...
For Vincent, it is like walking through emptiness, as the mind-schema he carries from Logis Blakswann has no point of reference for the sealed Inquisitorial Access shaft to the Oubliette. It is simply an absence, a cavity in his consciousness, and it is truly strange to tread within it, as if it exists somehow apart from the remainder of Ylesium Claustrum.
He is surprised that Launce has not commented on the peculiar aesthetic of its construction. Beyond the heavy bulkhead doors, the passageway was revealed to be a huge, pipe-like circular shaft, coated in a once-shining durasteel alloy, now caked in dust, ascending at a precise angle of 36Âş. Equally spaced, squared grooves, each approximately a meter in width, run parallel to the slope of the shaft at the four cardinal points. The only other feature of note are the equidistantly-spaced skid plates running along the lower portion of the shaft, straddling the groove there, and creating enough resistance so that walking is possible on the otherwise frictionless surface.
It is hard to say for certain, but Vincent estimates that they have been walking for over three weary and monotonous hours along the upward slope of the shaft when he spies the recessed door in the curving wall several meters ahead and to his right. Ryuk, just ahead of him in the shaft, spots it at roughly the same time. Approaching more closely, they can see it is an unmarked, reinforced vault door, windowless, without any handle or other visible method of ingress. A small curving protuberance of metal houses a cogitator screen shielded behind thick plasteel. The Inquisitorial seal is engraved in the gleaming metal beneath it, as much a warning as a means of identification.
Wardja tries to maintain an expressionless, blank mask, but internally finds his composure slipping under Leprade's cold scrutiny. From both his Arbites and inquisitorial training the seasoned acolyte fully understands the peril of underestimating anyone, but, just the same, he fears he may not have fully appreciated or anticipated the danger posed by this man.
Leprade seems nearly impossible to read. Although he continues to regard the disguised arbitrator in a polite, socially affable manner, Wardja's Arbites and Inquisition-honed instincts, instincts he has learned to trust implicitly, suggest there is something else happening behind the man's eloquently engaging facade.
Wardja, please attempt a Hard [-20] Scrutiny test.
"I must admit, I am intrigued to learn the identities of our fellow competitors---ah, it seems like another is arriving as we speak."
Wardja turns to follow Leprade's gaze over his shoulder toward the central spiral and observes the cosmopolitan crowd of wealthy elites parting to make way for a pair of brutish looking men, bulging with vat-grown musculature, that look like they were squeezed into their expensive, jet-black lux-suits by some inexorable force that defies other universal laws to keep their tailored clothing from bursting at its strained seams. Each of the well-attired Yellobouros ganger's faces is pierced with golden gelt-coin, that hang, layered in scale-like patterns, beneath their glowering eyes. There is no question in Wardja's mind that they carry concealed weapons on their persons, as they make no effort to hide the conspicuous bulges beneath their jackets. They diligently scan the floor of the Pinnacle of Pearl with the attention to detail of a professional security detail, and are soon followed by two more their ilk.
Immediately behind the Yellobouros enforcers is the subject of Leprade's attention, a haggard and severe-looking elderly man with a mane of white hair that flows past his shoulders, secured in braids and tassels with golden jewelery in the shape of traditional Oremite serpent motifs. His ostentatious clothing is dominated by a full coat of interlocking, golden gelt coins, an onerous weight that he easily carries due to his extensive cybernetic enhancements; gleaming gold legs, his entire right arm, and most of the left. His pinched and perpetually angry looking face is a tapestry of faded blue and gold, decorated in abstract sworls, whorls and even serpentine eyes tattooed upon his eyelids. A lho-stick heavy with a hanging ash dangles from his wrinkled mouth. He regards the room and everyone in it with a contemptuous glare that speaks volumes about his capacity for malice and about who truly holds power in Vaxus district.
Wardja's eyes narrow as a figure steps out from the shadow cast behind Trizo dol Soulard's menacing presence. A freakishly tall and slender female form wreathed in a flowing robe of midnight blue stands beside the gang boss, her hooded head further obscured by a diaphanous cowl of intricately stitched lace that is a deeper blue, almost black in color, when compared to rest of her garb. The only skin exposed on the mysterious woman are the long, corpse-white fingers that protrude from the hem of her sleeves.
Although her features are fully obscured, and her eyes invisible beneath the shroud, you get the unsettling impression that she is looking directly at you for a moment.
"Certainly. Perhaps we will be able to speak more freely at a later time?"
The Marchesa smiles coquettishly, an altogether disturbing grin that somehow reminds Thul of the proclivities that cap-mantids display prior to devouring their mates.
"Oh! Of course, you will have ample opportunity to do so following the tourney, provided there are no hard feelings when I win."
Her eyes flicker with the mischievousness of a woman a third her age at Savalos' expression.
"Best of luck to you, Lord Dawnstar."
Savalos Thul wrote:
"Lady Cinzia, if you would permit me the honor of calling you so. Perchance do you have a holo pic of yourself and your late husband? I would so love to look upon the face of the man who brought life back into the Dawnspindle."
"We are now acquainted by custom as well as by our mutual pasts, Lord Dawnstar, I would be most disappointed if you did not take the liberty."
She betrays no sign that she believes your request to look upon an image of the Marchez is forward in the slightest, nor in any way a breach of etiquette. You can see, for some peculiar reason, that she has become dotingly enamored of you and the potential that reintroducing you to Spire society will bring to her social standing. The Marchez seems to have a peccadillo for the scandalous.
"Why, yes, of course!" She calmly rifles through a small, scintillating purse, all the while holding the lap-pet close to her corseted bosom at a most awkward angle for polite society.
She produces a platinum holo-locket, and flicks the clasp open with the tip of one of her long, perfectly manicured, pearl-colored nails. She holds it before you to see, a melancholic smile creasing her aged lips.
"He was such a handsome man, he cut quite the profile in his day."
Savalos Thul can only look on, trying not to betray the tempest of thoughts swirling in his head.
"The pleasure is all mine, Comptroller Wimarc. I will be hard pressed to compete against one who so exemplifies the philosophical principles of the Concordium. I doubt I will be able to call your bluff, at any rate."
Leprade grins congenially, and even though he maintains polite eye contact, you are certain he is sizing you up, looking perhaps for the very tell-tale augmetic that the senior Skaelan-Har are typically known to possess.
Unduz II, Oremor 7th Legion Penal Claustrum, Designate Ylesium, Upper Panopticon/V-Block Sub-Level N
Launce's hands, bolstered by the extensible auspex devices that telescope from the tip of one finger, make a quick but methodical circuit over the otherwise unremarkable wall. The utility mechadendrite hidden beneath his nearly ruined robes slides beneath his left arm, and works in concert with his organic one, gently tapping the surface of the duralloy with some manner of lobe-shaped, sounding apparatus affixed to the tip.
He speaks while he works.
"I grew up, a feral urchin in the slums of Vaxus District in Orcut Hive, doing whatever it took to survive. I was not a strong child, a weakling compared to many of the other boys, so I took my beatings when fighting over the scraps of sustenance that were to be had, and was often hungry. Nor did I have a voice to beg with, I was a mute, unable to even ask for mercy when the other boys fell on me. There is no such thing as pity in the Underhive, so I used my mind instead. I became a lookout for gangers, serving as their eyes and ears, as my senses were always sharp."
His mechadendrite taps with a hollow bonging sound on one portion of the wall, midway up its height, and his dirty fingers work at scraping the grit and filth away from the surface. He finally slips one nail beneath what appears to be a tiny, circular panel, prying the hinged lid away from where it was flush with the wall. Dropping to his knees, he examines the resultant hole intently, still speaking.
"A long time ago, for me that is, I came to serve a brute named Raucho, an enforcer for one of the hive-gangs on this world. He was a savage who would murder his own mother for the next dose of stimm, but he kept me on because I had a knack for picking out the best marks, those with something worth stealing, that is, who wandered through our little hell. There came a day when I was following some obvious off-worlders, honestly, I was mostly fascinated by one of their number, a strange-looking man with blue skin; tall and thin, I'd never seen anything like him before. Later in life, I'd see more voidborn, but just then, for a child like me, it was like seeing a living, breathing xenos. I trailed them for a time, saw they were armed but lost, and did what I always did, tipped off Raucho for some corpse starch rations. Still, something about it didn't sit right with me then, so I watched as they came to meet their deaths in the roundabout. Something strange happened then. I felt the blue-skinned man touch my mind, a tickle of the Warp that laid bare my thoughts and greatly unsettled me. I could sense the violence that was to come when Raucho confronted them. After the psyker's touch I knew they were not ordinary marks..."
Launce peers into the gap in the door, poking delicately with sliver-like probes that retract from the fingertips of his other hand. He squints slightly, and his augemtic eye irises in time with the real one as he examines what he has discovered.
"Needless to say, Raucho and his gang didn't fair too well. I can't say I was sad. Only worried. My one source of regular food was gone, so I wandered the ruined habs, slowly starving. I woke up some time later to find that an angel was watching over me. She was a beautiful thing, all golden wings, like a girl-child given flight. There was something sad about her, too. She went away soon after, and I would have thought it a fever dream if I didn't see her again, another time."
The young tech-priest drives a narrow file-awl into the hole and twists, exposing an electro-graft port that slowly extends outward from the small declivity in the wall.
"I'd like to say that this experience changed me, but after the angel was gone, I fell in with Terko, one of Raucho's old gangers, one of the lucky ones that had survived that day. I went back to work, until one day a fire fell upon Vaxus, something exploded from our false sky. I followed the metal-man that came out of it for time, and quickly realized there was something about him that reminded me of one of the others. Terko had beaten me, done worse to me since I started working for him, so I made up my mind to end our relationship. I shadowed the new stranger and led Terko and his fellows to him, knowing full well what would happen. He killed Terko easily, and when I moved in to scavenge whatever food I could manage, I was so hungry by then I didn't care what might happen, he didn't hurt me, just flipped me one of the ganger's prybars and went on his way."
Launce's eletro-graft whirs and turns, a chatter of binary interrupting his words for a moment, and the second he retracts it from the port, the whole wall slowly accordions away to reveal a dusty, hollow containing an archway with a massive adamantine blast door set into it, framed in crumbling ferrocrete. He continues speaking, a grim grin of reminiscence on his pale face.
"The tech-priest was gone for a few minutes, but when I happened to look up I saw the girl-angel roosting on an old lumen post over the alleyway he went down, as if marking the way for me. I still can't say why I followed him, but I think it was the angel more than anything else."
Vincent and Ryuk look upon the massive door behind the wall, the senior clerk easily recognizing the massive, stylized "I" emblazoned with the skull motif embossed in its shining surface.
Launce breathes out from his exertions, gazing at the massive bulkhead with distant eyes. Ryuk and Vincent barely here his next words, so softly are they spoken from his gently hissing vox.
Wardja has worked time and time again with Astrid, so much so that even the most basic of communications, even absent any outward tone or inflection, can speak volumes due to their familiarity with each other. So heightened is this synergy, particularly now, that he senses the danger implicit in her voice through the microbead, even though it is but a single, clipped word.
<<<Boss...>>>
Watching the ripple of concern flow over the faces of Halleon's two disguised arbitrators that accompany him, Swinthosa Wardja turns slowly on his heel not knowing what to expect, but prepared for anything.
Intelligencer Leprade approaches him, his own security detail in tow, a genial look on his face. Even so, his dissolute blue eyes seem honed to an unreadable focus as the silver-edge of the expensive augmetics contract, his gaze brushing across the faces of your bodyguards before coming to rest on your own.
His voice is light, but something runs beneath it, an undercurrent that puts Wardja on his guard.
"Greetings."
"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Intelligencer Poul Leprade of the Adeptus Arbites of Oremor, Vaxus Precinct, and it seems, you, my friend, are the face of the competition."
As shrewd as the elderly spire-dame is at maintaining a facade masking her true emotions, she cannot help but reveal a certain amount of self-satisfied smugness, almost bordering on girlish glee at the her discovery of this most wonderful of secrets. Savalos can clearly see that her calculating mind is already projecting the advantage it will give her. She seems to notice his scrutiny, and in true theatrical fashion puts on a face of sober, concerned attention.
"How rude of me, I am the Dowager-Marcheza Cinzia dol Vingere, my late husband, the Marchez of Dannigaça, purchased the Dawnstar family holdings, including Spire 7, the Dawnspindle, at auction following the sorrowful tragedy that befell your relations so many years ago."
She seems to be weighing what you make of this revelation, trying to read into your reaction any further advantage she can. There is no question in your mind that the Dowager-Marcheza could be playing in this tournament should she desire to do so.
"Rest assured, Lord Savalos, your secret could be no safer than with one such as myself. In fact, this serendipitous relationship may prove to be mutually beneficial for our houses should you desire to cultivate it still further."
The spire-dame's pursed lips and haughty air, almost pugnaciously smug in her assumed superiority, undergoes a startling transformation in the instant Savalos' words register with her. Her skin blanches, visible even beneath her caked-on powder veneer, and her old, yellow-white eyes go wide in shock. Even the lap-pet stops mewling for a moment as if sensing his mistresses unease.
Sav knows then that there can be no questioning her certainty as to who he is. She had already recognized the family resemblance he shares with his line, but just had not made the connection.
"I---I---you---but---you..."
Even Savalos is impressed with her decorum and mastery of etiquette as she recovers swiftly from the shock of whatever revelation his identity has meant to her.
"...that is, you have my deepest and most profound apologies, Lord Dawnstar, I had not known that someone of your stature would be attending such a tawdry little fĂŞte such as this."
The curiosity, and is it apprehension, fear? Whatever it may be that colors her suddenly dancing old eyes even takes Savalos slightly aback. He realizes then what it conveys. She is reacting like she just found herself speaking to a dead person.
She recovers herself exceptionally well given the circumstances, a testament to her longevity in the cut-and-thrust that is the daily life of Orcut Hive nobility, and leans in rather conspirationally to whisper,
"I am ashamed to admit that I was under the mistake assumption that your line was no more..."
Sav, believe it or not, this is relevant, and I cannot find any mention of it previously in the text of the campaign or your character's background so I'll just ask: is Dawnstar the surname of the noble family that your mother, Ariella, originally was born to, or is it just a throwaway cover identity furnished to you by Wardja? If the latter, does Sav even know the surname of his mother's family? Finally, do you have a surname in mind for your mother's house if he does?
Unduz II, Oremor 7th Legion Penal Claustrum, Designate Ylesium, Upper Panopticon/V-Block Sub-Level N
Launce stops dead in his tracks at Vincent's decisive, almost ineluctable reply to Ryuk, and turns to stare directly at the place on the wall that the senior clerk gestures toward. He betrays no outward sign of it, but both Ryuk and Vincent can sense, the former psychically, the latter from his supernaturally astute powers of observation, that the tech-priest is visibly awestruck by this seemingly spontaneous, though rather innocuous utterance from Vincent.
In bizarre fashion, Launce segues into a strange, quiet soliloquy. Vincent is immediately reminded of some of the unfathomable things the Logis Blakswann imparted to him prior to his destruction in the Datacore. Mentions of temporal anomalies, possibility clusters, and the inexplicable sense during their conversation that they had spoken in the same circumstances countless times before.
Something about the odd young tech-priest's coy manner, and knowing smile when they first met...as if knew a secret, as if he had played this part countless times before. As if Launce recognized him.
"Finally, I never thought we'd actually reach it. After so many attempts, so many failures..."
Emerging from his reverie, perhaps sensing Vincent's cold gaze upon him, the tech-priest rather self-consciously flips his topknot to his other shoulder, augemtic eye irising closer to closed as he examines the otherwise unremarkable wall minutely.
He sighs deeply, and relents somewhat, knowing that Vincent will not let the moment pass.
Unduz II, Oremor 7th Legion Penal Claustrum, Designate Ylesium, Upper Panopticon/V-Block Sub-Level N
Leaving the Panopticon and the seething bedlam of hungry cries emanating from the abominations that are overrunning the Oubliette below, Vincent, Ryuk, and Launce make their way along narrow gantries and spiraling service stairwells by dint of the senior clerk's almost supernatural recollection of the claustrum's architecture, imparted to him by his communion with Logis Blakswann. Unable to utilize the unpowered lifts, the cautious trio instead find themselves advancing level by level through dust-choked maintenance stairwells to escape the Panopticon, while forcing open heavy bulkhead doors with dormant machine-spirits and long-dead mag-locks. Disturbingly, almost every vault-like door leading to the various levels of V-Block stands open, the individual penitent cells thrown wide, with no sign of struggle or violence. It appears almost as if someone simply let all of those imprisoned here free. The various guard stations they wander through are forlorn and empty, often with half-full cups of caf or long-ashed lho-sticks sitting unattended on workstations as if they were left in haste and never returned to. Munitorum weapon lockers stand empty and ransacked as if those who opened them did so in a great hurry. Vincent keeps expecting to find bodies, or other signs of violence, but none are in evidence, as if there was both a mass exodus of guards and prisoners but somehow no confrontation.
Finally, the group reaches a point in an isolated maintenance corridor on sub-level N of V-Block that gives the senior clerk pause. Examining the stenciled level designation on the wall and the patterns of corrosion along its surface, Vincent chuckles wryly, his eidetic memory coming to the fore again. Looking behind him and to the left he notes the small, inconspicuous black bulge of the hidden picter, the very one that recorded Commmissar Sepuetanq Ekubal's presence during the picter audit that Vincent conducted what seems like several lifetimes ago. It was here that the corrupted Commissar was last observed prior to appearing, impossibly, only seconds later, in the Warden Colonel's dining chamber countless levels and kilometers above. Coincidentally, the location in the senior clerk's mental cartographic recollection of the claustrum complex corresponds roughly to where the undocumented Inquisitorial access shaft's terminus would be located.
Looking around, however, there is no obvious sign of any door or other passageway here.
Uriah, Awareness test is successful by three degrees. Uriah, please feel free to make a Psyniscience skill test if you like predicated on Wardja's query.
With his attention focused on picking out the potential participants in the Heretics Wake tournament from the larger throng of mingling spectators, Uriah is the first to notice when Leprade arrives.
The lone entrance from the lower levels of the Gran Pallazzar to the Pinnacle of Pearl is a wide, sweeping, spiral staircase in the center of the casino floor, shaped from the very heart of the hollow, pinkish, nacreous material that comprises the entirety of the expansive room. To Uriah it looks like nothing more than the involute perfection of a spiraling nautiloid shell. Leprade wears all black finery, accented with green trim, and a modest amount of golden jewelry, but otherwise nothing about his attire betrays his station as a senior arbitrator. Four, large, stony-faced men, obviously bodyguards of some type by their confident gait and the barely perceptible bulge of hardened bodygloves beneath their black dress clothing follow in his wake like an unobtrusive wall of implied threat, eyes scanning the casino floor for anything amiss. Two of the four have pronounced ocular augmetics that look like nothing more than affixed, wrap-around glare shades. Leprade moves toward the nearest refreshment table and takes a slim flute of crystal from one of the hospitality staff before casting his own gaze about the proceedings.
Wardja, Awareness test is successful.
Wardja notices Leprade as well, it is impossible not to, really, as the traitor arbitrator and his retinue of low profile enforcers pass within arms-length of him while on his way to the refreshment station. He takes pains not to draw attention, but his instincts as an arbitrator refuse to allow him to refrain from discreetly sizing up his quarry now that he is seeing him for the first time in person. The 77th Precinct Intelligencer is a tall man with a proportionate build and cloudy blue eyes limned by the silvered, ringing flicker of expensive augmetics. His hair is long and steel gray, receding from a pronounced widow's peak and pulled back into a short, hacked-off tail behind his head that is bound in concentric golden rings adorned with petrified drought-crab shell. His nose is long, almost raptor-like, and pulls slightly to the left from being broken and reset imperfectly sometime long ago, the only imperfection to mar otherwise handsome features. He moves with purpose, sparing you and everyone in his path what seems a cursory glance, but is clearly a careful, methodical cataloging of his environment and surroundings.
Wardja, please attempt a Scrutiny skill test.
Rolling an Ordinary [+10] Charm (52) skill test for Savalos, 1d100 ⇒ 68, , failed by one degree, shifting the dame's disposition from Favorable to Indifferent.
The old spire-dame obviously takes some imagined slight by something in the forwardness in your manner; it is clear that the nettlesome old woman is used to directing the flow of a conversation.
"A riddle? Pshhht, I do not bandy about with gauche glam-weave fabricators for my own amusement, sir, I merely find something familiar in your countenance that elicited my curiosity. It is your place to answer in a fashion that meets, but does not exceed your station. One would think you have never spoken before to a spire-born! Now, the proper etiquette in this setting is to introduce oneself, straightaway, particularly when speaking to one's betters. Now, how may I address you, that I may make my own introduction?"
Yes, everyone in the Pinnacle of Pearl is in possession of a concealed microbead linkage able to transmit and receive on both the Arbites and acolyte frequencies. In addition, due to some of Gereos' exceptional technomancy, everyone is also able to eavesdrop on the Gran Pallazzar Casino's in-house security and general comm channels as well as the 77th Precinct's various dedicated operations and dispatch frequencies.
Concealed weaponry including handguns, blades, and ceremonial melee weapons, such as swords, are allowed for patrons of the Gran Pallazzar as long as they are part of the upper echelon of the clientele (the high-rollers and whales) but there is a strict self-defense only presumption here. Most of the wealthy elite forgo any weapons but keep a coterie of well-armed bodyguards on hand at all times. Due to Wardja's strong-arming of the Gran Pallazzar's higher-ups by invoking Ruvos Halleon, the acolytes and arbitrators are considered part of this select group. Additionally, if you choose to do so as players, more firepower (shotguns and more obtrusive weaponry) could have been secreted within the Pinnacle of Pearl prior to the evening's events. If this is the case, please specify just where you intend to hide the combat shotgun, autogun, or other firearm. Likely places include refreshment coolers, the portable liquor cartbars throughout the main gallery, and secured beneath the numerous tables set up within. A general location is sufficient for now, we'll deal with specifics should the need arise. Also Wardja, any smaller personal gear is still considered to be on your person.
While Wardja anxiously speculates over the troubling possibility that something in the bizarre architecture of the Pinnacle of Pearl was the reason it was chosen specifically by Leprade and Trizo, perhaps for an as yet unknown affinity to the Warp, Astrid casually passes him a chilled flute containing a sweet-smelling concoction of Oremite juices and ice. Seeing the consternation showing on the face of her boss, she briefly breaks character and gives him a direct glance that reminds him to maintain his cover. She then smiles the polite, clinically sterile smile of an experienced hospitality staffer and continues on her way.
Astrid passes Savalos without a look on the other end of the room just as Thul realizes that one of the spire-snobs' vapid concerns is afflicting him as well. Taking one gloved hand away from his cheek, he finds the fingers dotted with white powder and perspiration. While distracted in this momentary bit of cosmetic maintenance, an elderly woman, well over a century old, garbed in a tightly corseted purple gown approaches him. Her snow-white hair is swept up in a towering bouffant, pierced through in numerous places with ornate jade pins topped with graven faces depicting various and sundry emotional states. Her posture is somewhat stooped and forward leaning, but the golden cane she carries seems more for appearance than anything else, as she is clearly the beneficiary of her fair share of juvenat treatments. She clutches something small and black in both hands, petting and stroking its fuzzy-furred head in adoring caresses. Savalos can just make out two beady eyes regarding him with interest from the thatch of hair covering the thing's pug-face, but cannot tell if the the lap-pet is felid or canid. The aging spire-dame grants him a brittle smile by way of greeting, and then begins a conversation with him in a manner that only the fabulously wealthy, utterly secure in their station in life, can: simultaneously both outwardly warm and dismissively condescending.
"You! I know you from somewhere, your features are so distinctive, and I never forget a face. Harummmmm...your attire is hopelessly out of vogue in the upper spires of Orcut, but you wear it with a confidence that leads me to believe that it is a deliberate affectation on your part, so perhaps you are something of an avante-garde in the fashion industry, yes? Still, though I know many in the profession, you I do not recall. But still, yes, the cheekbones, the eyes, you are known to me, yes? No, no...let me guess...I so love to guess such things!"
Either a Blather, Charm, or Deceive skill test is the check to make here, Sav, depending on your response.
Uriah watches Savalos' enter into conversation with an elderly, harridan aristrocrat from the Upspires for a time before turning his attention to the milling throng that even now begins to gravitate into discrete clusters of the mingling elite. Some observation suggests that the social circles forming are predicated upon level of wealth, vocation, and relative standing amongst the assembled spire-born, and he tries to make sense of the patterns among the gallery as the room begins to fill. Those that are accompanied by valets, attendants, and bodyguards or personal security seem to have trains of humanity following in their wake, making it relatively simple to observe the most likely participants in the tournament. A quick glance at those around him in the balcony level suggest that they, too, are partaking in the guilty pleasure of gaping at the elaborate dance of power and politicking that justifies the extravagance of such events. The voidborn psyker tries to drown out the banality of their background thoughts as they burble around him, instead focusing on detecting anything of note that may be occurring below.
Uriah, please make an Ordinary [+10] Awareness skill test.
Wardja can make the same Awareness test at Difficult [-10], as his vantage point is not as viable as Uriah's bird-seye view from the mezzanine above.
Kaltos suddenly registers his strange prison's lateral movement come to a halt. After a short pause, it then begins to slowly ascend, before stopping again. His internal gyroscopic dampers detect a slight sway to his cell as it is arrested following the elevator-like movement.
Just once, Savalos wishes it didn't have to be about the numbers.
Looking across the crowded gallery of the Pinnacle of Pearl, his gaze again falls on the odd table edged in the soft, sepia tones of Unduz shellwood. It is roughly kidney-shaped, the surface a downy-soft patina of midnight blue felt comprising a circle at the table's widest point. On the left-most edge, a trailing, curving extension of the table encloses the dealer's side somewhat, holding the stacked chips and Heretic's Wake placards, making the whole thing look something like a sickle shaped teardrop. It fills him with a deep sense of unease when he again counts the ornately carved high-back chairs surrounding it.
Nine.
His attention is diverted for some reason to a slender female form gliding through the crowd of Upspire nobility mingling around the refreshment tables that ring the luxurious sunken circle of the Gran Pallazzar's most elite gambling enclave. As she passes between two ostentatiously dressed harridans bickering over the freshness of the estuary shrimp, he recognizes Astrid Beij, the abitrator, her own transformation rendering her nearly unrecognizable. Where she once affected the sultry and provocatively dressed smile girl, Mollene, she now is positively anonymous, clad in the simple black service dress of the Pinnacle's attentive hospitality staff. The only thing that identifies her is the cold glare she gives Savalos, apparently the distraction that caught his eye a second ago. Her look speaks volumes, reminding him that by gawking he is imperiling the verisimilitude of the disguise she spent so long perfecting for him. He reverts to the pompous sneer he has been maintaining since he and Wardja arrived at the penthouse level of the Gran Pallazzar, hoping it will be satisfactory to her. When he looks again, she is gone, strolling demurely through the throng with her tray.
Wardja makes the subtle exchange from across the room, and suppresses a grin. Two of the arbitrators on loan to him from Ruvos Halleon shadow his movements, garbed in formal-wear themselves but easily identifiable as bodyguards just the same. Of course, this is fine, as no self-respecting executor of the esteemed Skaelen-Har Hegemony would be seen without such protection. He takes in the inconceivably wealthy elites and casino personnel, noting each by turn, wondering if anyone else is something more than they seem. He drags deeply on his lho-stick, unaccustomed to the potency of the high-grade leaf that Astrid insisted he adopt to perfect his masquerade. Sometimes cheaper is better, he thinks, coughing under his breath. He wonders why Savalos was so mesmerized by the table a moment ago. So far there is no sign of their guests of honor, but he imagines that Leprade and Trizo are only running fashionably late.
He has to admit to himself that the Pinnacle really is a marvel. Although the Luminous Antechamber is witnessed by thousands daily and renowned across the sub-sector for its majesty and luminous, almost breathtaking beauty, it seems the management of Gran Pallazzar spared absolutely no expense with their grandest creation, even though only the most powerful and illustrious of Oremor will ever lay eyes upon it. Perhaps it is this exclusivity itself that helps set it apart. The entire level is an oblate-sphere built on a cathedral-like scale, ringed by a single-tiered gallery level and mezzanine midway up its gently curving walls, bounding by low railings overlooking the casino below. The scale and shape of this architectural marvel would be extraordinary even if it were not artistically shaped from a single, titanic pearl harvested from one of Oremor's oldest living things; a deep-vent mollusk of stupefying proportions known as a black nacre. These massive, nigh-mythic dwellers of the deepest ocean rifts are sought sector wide for the quality of their cystic inner treasures, but even the largest are rarely found any bigger than a meter in diameter. It is rumored that several hundred years ago, shortly after the construction of the Gran Pallazzar, the greatest of the gaming magnates of the time in Vaxus District set his extravagant sights on the most breathtaking architectural capstone imaginable for his life's work. The legendary pearl was discovered and harvested at astronomical expense, carved with curving passageways, chambers and vaults by Magos-wielded fusion torches at even greater outlay of gelt, and finally airlifted from the Geltdown Docks to be deposited atop the Gran Pallazzar on the day of its completion. Looking around at the perfect, mirror-sheen iridescence of the rounded walls, walls that seem to exude an indefinable, almost indescribable hue of rainbow-tinged light, even Wardja admits to some awe. Still, there is something about the weird, oil-sheen nacreousness of the undulating every-color that is vaguely disquieting. It is alleged that the entirety of the Pinnacle is illuminated from the light of a single candle at its center, the dim light of this one taper carried and transformed as it is reflected and refracted through the sinuous corridors and curves of the spheroid. Now then, where would that candle be exactly? He wonders about this as he surveys the open space overhead, eyes glancing along the edge of the encircling gallery high above.
Uriah catches his eye, but makes no gesture of acknowledgement from his perch in the very first row of the upper gallery. His vantage point allows him to see far more than the others, and as he finishes his count, he estimates that there are perhaps thirty incredibly wealthy personages milling about around the most expensive, floor-level seats below. There are perhaps three times that many in the gallery level from where he watches, the luxurious refuge of the second-tier ultra-rich, owners of entire manufactories, chartist vessels, or privatized plantation-nations from the Orcut continental interior. Along with these well-heeled personages, the occasional senior Adepta slumming it, and even a few of the more notorious Underhive power-brokers round out the ranks. Many chairs and tables ring the vaguely discomfiting shape of the central gaming table below, and even now, many are making their way to their assigned seating or returning to the enclosed servitor-carried sedan chairs that brought them to the Pinnacle of Pearl. Beside him, the curious of the lesser ultra-wealthy can only gawk at their betters below with jewel encrusted opera glasses, while puffing on the ubiquitous myconoid-filled hookah's that preposterously serve as a vice of choice on this doomed world.
Uriah takes a final note of the his allies positions below, finally spying Sgt. Einhardt acting with perfect mummery as he pulls the upholstered chair out from beneath a table for some garishly decorated spire-lady in the most servile manner imaginable. She barely acknowledges his presence, merely flipping the violet-plumed boa she wears over one shoulder, as she rigidly sits, the vice-like corset she wears forcing her sit unnaturally upright.
As he looks upon the central portion of the casino floor, Uriah notices a barely discernible recessed circle, about seven meters in diameter, just behind the audience's seating, conspicuous for the fact that no tables or chairs rest upon it. A loose ring of Gran Pallazzar enforcers surround the velvet-ropes cordoning it off. He frowns, trying to guess at what it might be.
OK guys, at long last, it begins. Feel free to take some time to survey the Pinnacle and interact with the NPCs if you choose. The tournament is roughly twenty minutes from beginning.
Ellipsis, I'm reposting something here from way back around IC page 66, while this knowledge may be only a week old in Vincent's mind, it probably isn't as fresh in yours almost one year removed from the original post, heck if you can remember a briefly mentioned bit of info from that far back, I apologize, your memory is probably as good as Vincent's!:
Vincent's eidetic mind opens, blooming like the violet chrunia flowers of the Unduz jungles. Perhaps at the mention of V-Block, the implanted memories of Vermillion-coded secure schemas for the construction of the Oubliette's deepest vaults resurface from his implanted memories, files and blueprints sealed away by Inquisitorial Writ upon pain of death by the Ordo Malleus, some even stamped with purity seals and benedictions to the God Emperor.
Despite the thousands of crabbed notes, printed call-outs and technical jargon crowding the visualized page, the relevance of the designs to the present moment is clear to Vincent immediately.
The floorplans show a large, centralized, stasis-sealed spherical vault, shielded by powerful psy-dampers and hexagramtical wards, in turn encircled by seven smaller spherical cells, similarly warded. The entire cyst-like grouping of penitent vaults sits isolated several levels below V-Block itself, accessed only by a single lift system that pierces the bedrock of the claustrum through a further series of psy-shielded, psyho-reactive bulkheads before terminating in a similarly warded cellblock wing that sits atop the eight cells like a lid.
Your mind feels a tickle, and you tease out something further.
No, the lift is not the only way into the Oubliette...one other route exists, but it does not exist on any of the schematics or the ancillary documentation. It comes from the living machine-memory of Logis Blakswann himself, whom nothing in the claustrum could be hidden from: an imprint on the living webwork of the facilities power draws and air handling cycles that reveals a long, diagonal shaft, more or less the modern equivalent of those once used to access certain ancient tombs, originating from a sealed suite of offices designated for visiting agents of the Inquisition in sub-level 7. It terminates at the end of the Oubliette's lowest wing above the eight spherical cells.
Launce turns away from Vincent and communes with the machine-spirit of the Panopticon's cogitator array again, his remaining human eye rolling back into his head to show the whites, arms held out delicately, almost marionette-like, twitching in time with the flow of binary data.
His face transitions from an appearance of intense concentration to a dawning dread, true fear pulling his jaw downward in an aghast grimace. Twitching uncontrollably, he roughly yanks the electro-graft free from the console, before collapsing to his knees.
Again himself, Launce turns to Vincent.
"They are free."
In true tech-priest fashion he recognizes almost immediately that his spontaneous utterance does not provide adequate information, and he elaborates before Vincent or Ryuk can reply.
"The Prisoner, he is free. But not just the daemon-host, all of the highest security prisoner-penitents above us in V-Block have been released from their cells."
The tech-priest shakes his head, as if in disbelief, and Vincent is again reminded how unlike the rest of his kind Launce is, with his still human, idiosyncratic mannerisms.
"Moreover, the entire cogitator core of the claustrum has been corrupted, as well as all other redundant subsystems. There is complete power loss to all non-essential systems; even now the last vestiges of emergency power are trickling to the highest priority sections, such as this one. Even this will terminate soon."
Only an hour later, Savalos finds himself in the lavatorium of the arbitrator's surveillance suite looking with disbelief into the wide curving mirror mounted on the wall. Astrid Beij stands behind him, clad in a black, form-fitting, ablative bodyglove that accentuates her athletic physique. Gone is the heavy layer of courtesan cosmetics she wore as Mollene, her pale skin clean and fresh, her dark hair drawn back into a severe bun on the back of her head. She betrays no expression at the stunning results of Savalos' transformation, her visage unreadable, severe, like a bird of prey affixed on the present object of its interest, nothing more. She has not said a word through the whole process, even when prompted by the ganger's friendly attempts.
The acolyte raises his hand to one pale, powdered cheek, feeling the ringlets of the tall, jet-black, pompadour wig he wears atop his freshly shaven scalp. The ringlets of his former mane of purplish hair still litter the floor, the stark color contrasting vividly with the gleaming white marble tile. The ganger marvels at how the skin-tone dusting of body make-up perfectly conceals the numerous tattoos along his arm as he raises his hand to pinch the significantly extended point of his prosthetically-enhanced nose. The faux-dermal material is like a second skin, and almost feels as real as it looks. The ganger in him is positively stupefied by the dramatic change, and when he sneers in genuine derision at the gross affectation of the tiny, circular mole painted on one cheek, the person in the mirror is not him showing contempt, but some arrogant Uphive nobleman staring down his elongated, fox-like proboscis at something beneath his lofty notice. The clothing completes the illusion; a bluish glamweave velvet surcoat with brocaded golden trim, knee-length trousers tucked into limned black stockings, and patent maulchup's leather boots festooned with golden buckles that seem to serve no practical purpose. The jewel encrusted gold and platinum jewelry Savalos finds himself wearing to complete the unlikely ensemble likely could have purchased most of the old Vaxus hab-block level he used to live in as a youth.
The door slowly opens behind him, allowing the chatter of the other members of the Arbites task force and the ambient sounds of the surveillance equipment to intrude. Wardja and Uriah then walk in, closing the door behind them. The arbitrator merely seems impressed at his fellow acolyte's skill at disguise, but the normally reserved Uriah cannot help but smirk slightly at seeing the stunning transformation that Astrid has wrought upon his once ruggedly disposed companion.
Astrid remarks, "I cannot help him act the part, but he will pass as far as appearances go."
The others turn and look at me. I pull out another lho and tap it against the table to pack the leaf in tighter.
"Tournament is at the Pinnacle of Pearl facility here in the casino. Real up-hive swank. My team will have a couple of rooms near the gaming floor where we can stage out of sight and maintain observation. Beij, Gereos and a few of my arbites on loan from Halleon will locate there."
"I'd like to have team members on the floor; Beij will pose as a serving girl." I look over at the sergeant, "Einhardt I'm hoping you can also be wait-staff."
Sgt. Einhardt shrugs.
"Fair enough. Just don't expect me to serve Leprade any broiled estuary-krill."
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
My gaze passes over the administratum clerk. Nervous, book-type. Don't really want him in the field. "Bothle, might suggest you aid Gereos with surveillance."
Bothle, although still a little overwhelmed by just what he has been drawn into, nods sheepishly, but seems to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation and the importance of everything going smoothly.
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"There is a viewing gallery with sufficient cover to place some agents, ready to make a move. Trantor, maybe you can watch from there? This will allow for a certain flexibility in response based upon what you observe."
Just a little correction here from what you wrote above, Eradico. The 'gallery' is actually the VIP seating placed around the gaming table and some more seating up in the mezzanine level of the Pinnacle of Pearl. The wealthier or more well connected you are, the closer you get to be to the action.
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
Skeit. I need to light this thing.
"Gereos has access to the floor's camera equipment. The casino keeps a close eye on matters to prevent cheating, stealing, and so on. But we'll use it to monitor Leprade, Trizo, and their cronies' movements. Dunkan--Is there a way you can tell if anyone else is jacked into the system? We have to assume the Enemy will also be watching."
Dunkan smirks slightly, some of the gloom dissolving from his features.
"I can. I knew your team had jacked into the system, but just couldn't determine who or where they exactly were. I'd tell you to give my compliments to your tech-priest, but I don't really need another servant of the Mechanicus wishing me dead."
"As of right now, my only concern was your group, now that I know who they are, picking up on any other interlopers in the data-loom for the Pallazzar should be simple enough."
"I can supply some additional muscle to stay close to the Pinnacle during the match, but I'd advise keeping the bulk of the Gear Box enforcers with Oktammor, Albrek and the others at the cargo-8 in case we need to leave in a hurry. I'll apprise him of what we intend once the plan is finalized. Never hurts to have an Emperor in the hole if everything goes to hell."
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"Me and Thul will be on the floor as gamblers in disguise." I look at the Duct Wolf, wondering if he really knows what Astrid has in store for him. "We'll really have to do you up, Thul, to cover your gang markings. I'll pose as a rich, off-world merchant trader here to kill time and spend money."
Savalos' eyebrow arches slightly at this last.
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"Between our surveillance and field agents, I'm hoping to gain information. Anything we can. About Leprade, Trizo, the Yellowbacks, the Oremor Penal Legions, anything. Priority will be to try and find if the trail of corruption leads higher." I move over to the Regicide board. "We know that Leprade and Trizo are minions. We need to find out who they serve."
I pick up the black Inquisitor and examine the piece. My thoughts drift back to some of the crime scenes I've previously surveyed: the House of Mercy, the Gelt-Down Docks, the Gearbox. All razed. I know it's not the acolytes fault but I have to say it. I look over at Thul. "If, as you say, things go frag and certain targets present themselves--fine. I hope to see Leprade dead too. But keep in mind the greater cause."
I put the piece back on its square and light up my lho-stick.
Wardja inhales deeply, the lho-smoke filling his lungs and focusing his thoughts.
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"Thanks to loyal officers like Luthos and the activities of Iacton and Vendagio, we've been able to put the squeeze on Leprade's arbite support. That may be another reason for their meeting. Or maybe its the assassination of the governor. I don't know. But as you said Thul, there's only one way to find out. That's why I hope we can either see or hear something that will aid our efforts."
"Dunkan, I plan on carrying one of these and may choose an opportune time to use it. Make sure it is properly attenuated and will transmit to our surveillance channel." Out of my pocket I pull a small device out of my pocket and lay it on the table in front of the Heretek.
Dunkan picks the device up, examining it with genuine professional curiosity. He smiles when he realizes just what the cleverly designed vox-device does.
"This will be put to good use, I can assure you."
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"OK, that's all I've got. This is an important, very important opportunity. I need feedback. I appreciate, Thul, that you want to hear me out. So... What have I missed? Who else should be on the floor? What other precautions should be made? What other contingencies should be prepared for?"
Gazing around the suite I take another drag and wonder if this meager group will be enough to save a planet.
The unlikely assemblage of disparate Inquisitorial acolytes and those that have been caught up in the wake of the events on Oremor listen intently to Wardja's words, knowing full well what they face.
OK, I'll leave an opportunity for Sav to address any further concerns or pose any final ideas for the plan and then move on to the next scene when everyone is ready.
Ryuk looks at Launce wired directly into the illuminated console of jet-black plas, and wonders at what his rescuer and the half-metal-man are referring to. Unused to such technical jargon, he instead reaches out with his mind, apprehensive of just what he might find...
Sense Presence test is just successful, Ryuk.
Pushing his mind through the morass of madness that clamors from the depths of the Oubliette, the daemons still seething with anger at having lost their prize, Ryuk tries to focus instead upon the immediate vicinity.
There is nothing.
No thoughts are returned to him, the silence deafening.
Wondering at what became of his one-time jailors, even the other penitents, he is filled with a deep unease. The lingering psychic miasma of the Prisoner is still here, but the scent is cold, as if his progenitor passed this way some time ago.
It is apparent to Ryuk that nothing survived in his wake.
Kaltos again hears the distant thumping of powerful machinery from somewhere beyond the thick walls of his cell.
Now that his potentia coil is again fully recharged, he finds he can cogitate more efficiently about his present predicament. Additionally, his internal gyro-sensoria's quantification has increased by several orders of magnitude with regard to accuracy. He can now easily derive that his prison is moving at approximately 2.271 kilometers per hour in a rough southeasterly direction with relation to the Orcut VII hive, but his geosynchronous self-locator is returning nothing about his present position on Oremor itself.
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
Savalos studies the board, but finds no further revelation forthcoming. His burst of elation and certainty of what Iacton's bizarrely oblique revelation portended has passed, gone as soon as it came. It is as if whatever strange force refined his perceptions to such a staggering clarity moments ago while watching has passed. The sensation recalls brief, dream-like flashes of his time with K'lei-eth at the Wellspring of E'auvennade. Glancing at Uriah, he can see that the psyker has experience something very similar.
Savalos looks down at the board again, noting how the White Empress has also fallen. This requires no supernatural awareness for him to comprehend, and his thoughts turn to his mother, Ariella.
Uriah studies the board again, the brief flash of the witch's prescient presence gone again from his consciousness. The Black Inquisitor. There is a message here, and some dark part of him senses the answer close at hand.
Dunkan says little, his own attention fixated upon the nearly finished game of Regicide. His eyes never waver from the pieces. His voice still remains grim; foreboding.
Swinthosa Wardja wrote:
"Let's assume the death of the Co-Governor derailed some aspect of the Enemy's plan. Perhaps that is what prompted the meeting between Trizo and Leprade tonight?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"Whatever the case may be, we have little time left to prepare for the Pinnacle, we should begin soon. I fear we may have very little time left at all."
He finally tears his eyes away from the board, and Wardja can't help but avert his eyes from the haunted look on the heretek's face.
"I fear this is true for all of Oremor."
OK guys, I'll wait for your direction on where to go with the next scene. Feel free to debate, plan or otherwise engage with Dunkan as needed if there is anything further you wish to discuss. Once everyone is ready, we'll move along to the planning for the Pinnacle of Pearl.
Noting Vincent's difficulties with the cogitator control array, Launce moves over to examine them himself. He nods thoughtfully to Vincent, the concern for the exhausted clerk evident on his face.
"Allow me."
The tech-priest extends his electro-graft to one of the many vacant ports, and connects it, holding both hands rigidly over the nearest keypad. There is an ominous delay of several moments, wherein Ryuk wonders if the tech-priest has perished, so still is his body and rigid his posture, but then, in a flurry of activity, Launce's hands begin to fly over the keys like a maestro Ministorum organist. Lights begin to flicker to life across the panel and brief bursts of binary utterances escape from the entranced servant of the Omnissiah's slack mouth.
It is all over fairly quickly, and Launce then regains some semblance of normality. He remains connected to the console but turns to speak to Vincent in a voice that is both expectant and weary.
"I have obtained access to the root control systems of the Panopticon cogitator core---there is---much utility here...what is it you wish me to do?"
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
Dunkan frowns, arching his eyebrows at Savalos' words, but wastes no time in wheeling over the small, round table upon which his Regicide board sits. He hesitates before clearing the pieces arrayed atop it, either memorizing the positions of his game, or lamenting the loss of the contest, you cannot say for certain.
Uriah takes action, spooling quickly again through the pict-cording from Krade's abduction without needing a word from Savalos, as if the acolytes are of the same mind, their reasoning of the inscrutable puzzle playing out in tandem, the ganger driven by the half-remembered words of the Farseer, the psyker hearing the whispered urgings of Ariella in his deep subconscious.
Watching the frozen, flickering frame of Krade's own regicide board from the recording the two work without a glance at each other, Savalos arraying the white pieces, Uriah the black, until the game is duplicated before them.
Everyone looks upon the resultant placement of the pieces for what seems an interminable time, and then Savalos almost petulantly knocks over the white Emperor, the heretical wrongness of the seemingly innocuous act weighing heavily upon all in the silent room. It takes the acolytes slightly longer to see the result than Dunkan, an expert student of the game.
His face pales as he speaks, the first move of the endgame clear to everyone even as the words fall from his lips like leaden weights.
"Without the white Emperor---there's only one thing that's different."
He points ominously toward the board, his finger alighting on a slender, cowled figurine of deepest ebon.
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
In short order, and with less suspicion that he would presuppose, Wardja is provided access to a battered cogitator array that the heretek keeps hidden behind the louvered doors of a dusty walk-in closet. Raising the tech-priest on microbead, Gereos' voice responds promptly. In a voice utterly without inflection, his digitized binary utterances interface seamlessly through a horn-like vox-corder built into Dunkan's system, providing the necessary ciphers and encryption bypasses for Danicos' to be privy to the surveillance feeds.
Following this, there is a quiet chime from a device secreted upon the arbitrator-detective's person, and he produces a tiny holo-picter, one likely not too dissimilar from the one hidden beneath the binding of the Corpus Presidium Calixis from Krade's office. He sets it down on the center of the table, and a hololithic projection flickers into life, in full color, and not so opaque that the acolytes cannot see Dunkan's face through the image from their side of the table.
The image depicts a luxuriant office of the kind favored by senior members of the various Adepta, decorated in dark shellwood furnishings, faded tapestries intricately stitched with scenes of the Angevin Crusade or Oremor's early history, and a large, ornate desk of the same lustrous wood, topped with a pale green marble surface. A lone figure sits behind the desk, his overarching chair of office shrouding him in shadow, fingers splayed anxiously before his rather drawn and tired countenance. He sips from a small glass. It is clearly the temporal ruler of Orcut VII hive, Taius Ceprus, Imperial co-governor of Oremor. You recognize the swept-back salt and pepper hair, the balding pate, and the jowly, yet determined face immediately. Only his eyes look different. Where they are normally deep blue, resolute, and brimming with the authoritarian confidence of his politipicts, now, nothing could be further from that glossy, propagandist imagery.
He looks terrified. His hands slowly come away from his mouth, his fleshy jaw working, but no words coming forth as a cloaked figure skulks into the frame from behind the edge of one of the wall-hangings. From the primary angle displayed, the figure has his back to the picter, but Wardja deftly resolves a number of smaller images with the device, enlarging them, so that everyone seated around the table can see that it is unmistakably Iacton.
A tremulous gurgle spits forth from the stunned governor's lips, but he says nothing, and it is clear he is struggling to articulate words not from the abject terror at encountering this intruder, but a more immediate cause. When Iacton speaks, Taius Ceprus can only gape.
"You will not be able to speak. The anesthetizing chem I slipped into your cup has paralyzed your vocal chords. It is better than you do not try to cry out, you will cause yourself needless pain and further constrict your breathing."
The governor either doesn't hear correctly, and or is too frightened to stop his attempts, and he begins to make a low, plaintive hooting, the pathetic dissembling sound of a powerful man rendered utterly impotent easy to hear amid his spittle-filled babbling.
Iacton only steps closer to the desk, drawing what Uriah recognizes as the mono-edged Fulcusian sword taken from Dunkan's armory.
"The toxin will quickly spread throughout your system with this struggling, I implore you to remain calm, and face your death with dignity worthy of your station, Lord Governor."
As if proving Iacton's point, Ceprus tries to struggle to his feet, but his legs simply fail him. He stands long enough for you to notice the spreading stain upon the front of his robes of office as his bladder revolts. He falls forward with a crack on to the marble surface of the table, tries to push his body upright again, but finds he is completely paralyzed.
Iacton stalks forward inexorably.
Krade's assassin clears the desk around the governor's head with a delicate touch, almost tenderly setting aside a stack of dataslates, some manner of wooden sculpture, and a rack of gold burnished autoquills. All that remains is the sniffling head of Taius Ceprus, head side-down, like it has been placed on an executioner's block. He begins to make a frantic mewling sound, his fingers tapping uselessly against the surface of the desk as Iacton draws near.
The lack of emotion Iacton's voice is chilling, as if he is speaking from far, far, away.
"I beseech your forgiveness, you are no traitor to the Imperium, but my master has deigned you must die so that billions more have the chance to survive what is to come. You are another frayed thread in the loom of Fate, a step along the Path, a wayward variable in this Possibility. Do not despair, I promise you that with all my will, I will endeavor to see that your sacrifice will not be in vain, your time in this Game is merely at an end."
With one precise slice, faster than the naked eye can follow, the blade arcs down, clinking lightly, almost musically, against the seafoam colored marble of the desk. Iacton sheathes it just as quickly. Were it not for the slowly spreading pool of blood beneath Taius Ceprus' head, or his wide, blankly staring eyes, you would think that nothing had happened.
Krade's man turns from the murder with cold detachment and walks out of the holo-picter's frame, disappearing into an adjoining room like a ghost in the darkness.
OK Kaltos, while it is not precisely the effect of the Electrical Succor talent, I'll never be the one to discourage a player for thinking outside of the box. Even if unsuccessful, you can still avail yourself of the talent and capacitor embedded in the guts of the wall to attempt to regain Fatigue levels lost to the stun grenade. Please attempt a single Toughness characteristic test, if you succeed at Ordinary [+10] difficulty you can regain Fatigue as stated in the talent description, if you succeed at Very Hard [-30] difficulty on the same roll, you will have circumvented the door's locking mechanism by channeling enough of a charge to disable it.
Kaltos approaches the door slowly, already beginning to intone the appropriate ritual incantation as he raises his palms and activates his electoos.
With the klaxon dead, Ryuk and Launce make their way over to Vincent, who finds he is beginning to think more clearly again now that the deafening noise has ceased. Trying to shake off the lingering effects of his lapse into unconsciousness, he turns his attention to the Panopticon's exotically complex console cogitator system and its controls.
Vincent, if you wish to decipher the controls, please attempt a Hard [-20] Common Lore (Tech) skill test.
Totally understandable Ellipsis, I just wanted to give Vincent the option of a sneak peek so he could potentially save the Fate Point he had just regained, especially if the result was something viable in the interest of a good roleplay opportunity. I definitely would have allowed the re-roll though if Vince suddenly sprouted a bowel from belly-button or some other hideous spontaneous mutation. Shoot me an email, I'd like to discuss the nature of the witchmark before describing it in IC, and that likely means a dialogue on the direction that Vincent's character is taking now that he is officially a Malefic Scholar.
Weird, too, I originally made this post a couple of days ago, but it looks like the forums ate it or my connection was on the blink when I submitted.
Clawing his way up the nearest terminal, Vincent's fingers fly over the keys of the rather sophisticated system, which fortunately is still open and not cipher-locked. It is a relatively simple matter to override the alarm system, and the klaxon dies a guttering death, droning to ever lower frequencies before shutting off entirely.
Somehow, the total silence that follows is worse. He calls out again to his companions, but sees that the klaxon ending had a similar effect on them. Both silhouettes turn at the same time in his direction and they approach together. The baleful red eyes of the malfunctioning pict-screens and their associated cogitators watch over everything like the angry dead.
Methodically examining the doorway, Kaltos determines it to be a Sanctuary XXI class restrictor portal, a design commonly employed to provide a completely secure environmental seal on the cells of penitents and dangerous animals. Provided it is operating to specifications, there is an extremely high probability he will be unable circumvent it from the prisoner's side of things without any of his sacred tools.
There is more of the strange thundering and mechanical activity coming from above his head, muffled through the walls of his cell. He notices then that the internal gyrostabilizers inside of his cyber-mantle have shifted ever so slightly. Although it is not evident from sensory cues, he believes that his cell is moving ever so gradually to the west according to his geo-location sensoria.
Deciding on a systematic and logical examination of his unexpected incarceration, he approaches the seams in the dome-like chamber where he suspects the door to be. He methodically examines the outline, feeling for any imperfection or inconsistency in the seal.
Kaltos, please attempt a Routine [+20] Common Lore (Tech) skill test.
Somewhere the awful, repetitive howl of some angry beast sounds.
Vincent awakens to find hundreds of staring red eyes regarding him with burning malice from the dark. His vision still blurred from the unholy reek of the toad-daemon yet clinging to him, it takes the clerk a moment before he is seeing clearly again.
Cogitator monitors. Scores and scores of them in a curving ring all around him, all displaying a single red failure rune in Gothic cipher.
The howling terror is the blaring klaxon, now much louder than it was before, heard from so far below.
As he rises to his haunches, head still spinning, his hand instinctively goes to the power sabre. Finding it tucked back into his belt, he feels in an inexplicable sense of relief that strangely calms his frazzled nerves.
From nearby, over the roar of the alarm, he can just hear the droning sound of the tech-priest's vox as he whispers to someone else. The answering voice is deep, somewhat halting, as if each word is carefully considered before being uttered. The voice of a man who is learning again the nuances of conversation.
Midway up the curving wall on all sides is a nearly impenetrable observation window of perfectly clear diamantine, the beveled edges of the transparent surface etched with extensive excerpts of Ministorum scripture. Here and there, like lonely sentinels in the huge space, are wheeled chairs, some overturned from the hasty departure of whomever last sat in them.
The two figures speaking stand by an open portal like a void door, and the clerk can see the skeletal outline of a catwalk rail beyond. In the middle of the circular room an ancient wrought-iron spiral stair, each lancet post topped with a cherubim's face, each riser a slab of silver-chased white marble, carved with even more Ministorum screeds.
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
Dunkan Danicos raises an eyebrow as Wardja opts not to drink, but says nothing on the matter.
Uriah Trantor wrote:
"I saw a sign with that flower where Stroinigli picked us up, before rejoining you, Savalos."
"By the Canting Court? On the Dolmen Rue? Heh, I'd almost forgotten about that place come to think of it, but you're right, there's a rotter's orchid on the lumen-sign of some apothecary's shop, purveyors of all manner of rare herbs and exotic tonics, fraudsters likely; preying on Upspire nobles with too much gelt and too little sense to procure real medicine for what ails them. Come to think of it, that place has been there forever."
Dunkan rubs his fingers together thoughtfully, smearing some of the grease covering them and nearly resting his chin on his hands before instead wiping them on his thick welding apron.
He asks the leaden question that you have all been struggling with since Wardja revealed the identity of Taius Ceprus' assassin.
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
Savalos Thul wrote:
"Good to see you Dunkan. You got a bar stashed away in here? Think me and Einhardt both could use a drink."
"Nothing so fancy as that, lad, but this place has a wonderful cellar, and with what I get comped, they keep me in the good stuff."
He produces a tall, green glass bottle of Fulcusian mycobrau, a '23 culture from one of the renowned farms on the U'ytal archipelago, and hands out rather shoddy tin cups. He begins to pour, and passes it around the table to all interested in partaking.
Savalos Thul wrote:
"So Dunkan any luck in you all finding that seven petaled flower I was asking about?"
As he sips, he contradictorily shakes his head in negation and then nods. After swallowing he answers,
"Yes and no. What you described, well, there is no other way of saying this---it doesn't exist anymore. Extinct for over a thousand years. It took me some time to find it on my own. Its formal name is mycoseptiflora calyx-carnifex, more commonly known as "seven-bladed-midnight", or if you're a hedge wizard, "rotter's orchid". A carnivorous, flowering fungoid plant that used to proliferate along the Orcut coast, it was somewhat infamous amongst the ancient indigenous tribes for its toxic qualities."
He looks at Savalos pointedly, his eyes leaving his question unasked but very clear just the same:
You asked me to dredge up this bit of seemingly pointless trivia, would you now mind explaining why?
Dunkan takes another sip, smirking a barely noticeable smile of relief when Einhardt finally relents and partakes of his own drink.
The nervous Bothle is already getting himself a refill.
Kaltos feels within the folds of his robes and different places on his person where he secrets various tools, but finds that the gangers were especially thorough. His electro-graft and electoos are intact, and have not been tampered with, but all of his other equipment has been taken.
The erratic pounding from somewhere above continues, with no discernible pattern or order.
The Gran Pallazzar Casino, Lux-Suite Tower #5, Room 808
As Wardja finishes detailing the finer points of his plan to Dunkan, the servitor approaches the door to the improvised workshop and grants entry to Savalos and Sgt. Einhardt, both returning unsuccessfully from their search for the tech-priests and 7th Legion guardsmen in the bowels of the neighboring Vermillion Ring arena.
Wardja is impressed by the heretek in spite of himself. According to Uriah, he has essentially been a sleeper agent in Vaxus District tasked with observing events in Orcut hive for his unnamed master for many years, operating the Gear Box as a front for his activities. His acumen and intelligence cannot be denied, and his manner, though oft-times irreverent, is oddly likeable for its practicality and mordant, deadpan humor. Although Wardja does not share the same deep antipathy that the tech-priests reserve for one of Danicos' ilk for violating their sacred laws, nor is he an overly ardent disciple of the Faith himself, the arbitrator does feel unnerved somewhat by Dunkan's rather pragmatic godlessness.
He welcomes Savalos with a broad grin, and gestures he and Einhardt to sit. It is clear he is most comfortable speaking with the former ganger.
"Welcome back, Sav."
"I would be lying if I didn't say some small part of me was hoping you wouldn't find the two tech-priests, but just the same, that is for selfish reasons. I truly hope they're all alright, particularly your troopers, sergeant. I apologize for what this errand has already cost you and your squad. I know you wish to lay the blame on Vincent, but in the end it was by my request that you became embroiled in these events."
Einhardt says nothing, simply rubbing his bandaged head. It would be charitable to say that he is staring daggers at Dunkan. More like power swords.
The heretek curses, shaking his head ruefully.
"Feck, I'm sure not making many friends in this whole mess."
He looks around the rather drab, utilitarian workshop room at those assembled and chuckles to himself.
"Well if ever there has been a more unlikely council of allies among the agents of the Inquisition, I'm not sure I've ever heard of it."
No prob, Rad. You should see the fruits of success. Nice job to both of you in the encounter, that was quite the tense little dance. Although I proved this time around even the GM rolls awful in combat sometimes, that was a lot of missing!
As the skimmer rises steadily into the air, approaching the massive panopticon complex overlooking the Oubliette from above, Launce gives a yell of triumph, and the cackling madness from the slough of daemons below gradually recedes.
Ryuk arrests Vincent's fall and gently drags him toward the fore of the craft, away from the slick of pus and filth exuded by their pernicious adversary. The clone cradles his bony liberator in his arms, but Vincent's eyes only stare blankly toward the ceiling of the subterranean prison, the actinic glare of stab-lights making his eyes shine in the gloom.
Vincent:
OK, Scrutiny test is successful, but I'll be emailing you the results, Vincent for secrecy's sake.
The Willpower test for resisting Mental Trauma is unsuccessful, rolling for the result, no extra degrees of failure, so it is a straight roll on Table 8-6, p. 235 of the DH core book, 1d100 ⇒ 38, though momentarily catatonic, Vincent suffers no other lasting effects other than becoming withdrawn and quiet, penalizing him a -10 to all Fellowship related tests for the next 3d10 ⇒ (7, 3, 1) = 11, hours.
Vincent can spend a Fate Point to re-roll the Malignancy test if he wishes, but the final result will stand. I will preview the result of the failed roll so you can decide if you want to keep it for RP'ing purposes, Ellipsis, 1d100 ⇒ 32, a Witch Mark (see DH core book, p. 239). I offer this alternative as Vincent only has 1 Fate Point presently, and he just regained it.
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