Auraxis shakes his head, "The tech is too alien in origin. At any rate let's come back to this later, it appears we should get going".
Auraxis stands up and marches to the open portal with his Bolt Pistol in one hand. "The Emperor Protects".
He steps in...
The mirror door opens on to a wide domed corridor, decorated opulently in polished white marble and hung with drapes of deep blue velvet. Along one side of the corridor are a series of wide crystal-glass windows overlooking the void of space. Hung majestically against the black, illuminated in the turbulent light of a boiling white star, is a mighty fleet of vessels at gravity anchor, many Imperial in design others strange and unique to the eye. At the centre of this fleet is a mighty Battleship, decked out in ivory and brass, dwarfi ng all the other vessels around it, its armoured prow mounted with the heraldic arms of a great golden spider.
The door behind you vanishes.
Without warning the livid tracery of weapons fire and explosions bloom in the void as allies become treacherous enemies and the ships try to get underway and scatter before sudden onslaught from their neighbors.
Alarm claxons sound and a door behind them opens. Rushing through it, and through you as if they were not there, comes a stern-looking but beautiful young woman in a bustled dove-grey gown and a high collar of black filigree lace, leading by the hand a raven-haired young girl in her early teens dressed in white, clearly her daughter by the resemblance in their faces. Beside them whirs a silver-plated servo skull which suddenly crashes to the ground and is still, cutting off their conversation and stopping them in their tracks as brass shutters roll down over the crystal windows and cut of the view of the fiery battle outside.
"Is this a memory or have we stepped through a mirror in time wherein we are but ghosts? Thoughts my friends?"
"I believe we are merely shades in these events because they happened in the past, if the Gilded Widow is to be trusted. I suggest we learn what we can to discover why these events are important to Haarlock."
Sister Revanche moves to follow the fleeing women.
In short order, the air at the far end of the corridor ripples and a featureless female form, glistening like oil on water appears, moving forward like lighting, a shimmering grey blade in her hand. The lady stands her ground, shielding her daughter and dies in futile bravery, crimson blossoming across her dress. The girl turns and runs, making it perhaps as far as the your group before the assassin claims her life mid-step.
The assassin fades again from view and from nowhere there is an immense howl of rage, more felt than heard; its passing is enough to dim the light and steal the breath from your lungs. A mirror-door appears in front of you as time seems to speed up. The shapes of naval armsmen and servitors flow around them, moving at blurring speed, as a lean and indistinct figure in a long flowing cloak moves with glacial slowness between them, its shoulders slumped as it cradles the girl’s body in its arms and staggers towards the mirror-door unseeing.
"I deny this, I deny this, I deny this." The whispered words seem to hang in the thinning air.
"No doubt the source of Haarlock's rage and sadness".
"I think we've seen what we are meant to see here. Let's move on."
Sister Revanche moves through the mirrored door.
As you pass through the flickering cold light of the mirrordoor you are greeted immediately by warm and cloying air, reeking of burnt plastek and a greasy unpleasantness like overcooked fat.
All around you, and for as far as the eye can see, are the broken ruins and tangled wreckage of a once mighty hive city. The skeletal remains of soaring spires and lofty buttresses jutting like blackened carcass bones, their bases clogged with mountains of rubble and fallen masonry. A soft fall of grey snow is settling, blanketing everything from a turbulent, storm laden sky. As it falls and powders on your clothes, you realize it is not snow at all, but cinder ash.
An immense dark shape appears through the boiling clouds and the blasted city around you vibrates to a deep discordant drone, breaking what you now realize was an utter, deathly silence. The cyclopean shape in the sky resolves to a obsidian-like disk, slowly revolving and flickering with a baleful crimson glow at its center; a vessel of some kind perhaps more than kilometer across and utterly alien.
As the dark vessel passes through the sky it is joined by another and another, and their progress casts a pall of deeper darkness over the dead city.
The mirrordoor closes behind you.
Auraxis moves forward to see whatever it was we were intended to see through this mirror.
"A xenos invasion?"
(Is the city an Imperial one? Any bodies?)
Graki shudders and watch the ash fall from his garments.... lifting his nose in the air to get a sense of all smells in the air hoping to catch a scent beyond the burning plastek and charred ash
"Orders"
Do you want to explore the city some?
As you traverse the destroyed landscape you come to the conclusion this was definitely an Imperial City with fallen statuary, broken Aquilas and so on. It appears to have been destroyed by bombardment and firestorm, but not so long ago, as attested to by still smouldering fires.
After some time you realize this is Hive Sibellus. One thing that is rather disturbing in the waste-scape is the absence of bodies. With this much destruction you would expect to see some bodies.
"Is this the past, or Haarlock's twisted future?"
Your group continues through the destroyed hive for a while until you come across a blasted crater. When you peer into it you see great piles of what appears to be scorched and gnawed-on skeletal remains, all missing heads. Nearby on a wall, a spiraling, vortex-like symbol has been burned as if by acid.
You hear the sound of a woman screaming in the distance!
"I believe that is our lead to follow". Auraxis begins to head in that direction.
When your group makes it to the area where the scream came from you see an amorphous mass of rippling wet flesh the size of an armoured vehicle that floating silently above the ground right behind a young woman. You see it sweep her up in it's fat metallic tendrils tipped with pincers and pull her into it's obscene lamprey like mouth enveloping her head and decapitating her. As you look closer you can see the heads of others preserved in a semitransparent fleshy sack on the creature’s back.
Once it's done with the girl it turns toward your group and rushes toward you with it's tendrils out hungry for more heads!
Harvest Construct Init
"Not good".
Initiative
"We are not ghosts here!"
Init
"@$!=" in his native tongue
Round 1
Graki - 11 [Life 6/Faith 2]
Revanche - 5 [Life 6/Faith 3]
Harvest Construct - 5
Auraxis - 4 [Life 8/Faith 2]
The creature is about 50m from you guys right now floating toward you.
Graki races towards the creature grabbing his sword
Sister Revanche looks around, looking for terrain features that she could use to her advantage in an attempt to outflank the xenos war creature.
The construct continues to make it's way toward you very slowly....
Auraxis will drift forward waiting for it to get into range. Mostly I want to focus on the rest of the area around us to make sure no other threats are present.
Top of the round then Graki is up. You can hit it with a charge attack this round if you want.
vs 65. Charge attack
penn 6
Graki hits the creature and takes a nice chunk of it off but it's still appears to be alive.
Sister Revanche moves to the flank and fires her Inferno Pistol into the creature.
for Pen 12
The creature reaches out with it's pincher to get Graki!
Pen 6 Toxic
vs 44 dodge
Auraxis seeing no other foes calmly walks forward and once in range fires semi-auto regular bolter rounds at the creature aiming above Graki's head as the opponent is huge.
Bolt Pistol
Bolt Damage
Tearing
The bullet does a bit of damage to the creature!
Sister Revanche charges the creature from the flank, swinging her power sword in wide arcs.
for
for
The sword cuts deep into the creature damaging it some more!
The creature strikes out at Graki again!
Round 2
Graki - 11 [Life 6/Faith 2]
Revanche - 5 [Life 6/Faith 3]
Harvest Construct - 5
Auraxis - 4 [Life 8/Faith 2]
Auraxis continues to walk towards the creature firing off semi-auto regular bolt rounds.
Bolt Pistol
Bolt Damage
Tearing
The bullet tears into the creature but it still stands.
Lightning strike
Blademaster reroll
The creature drops and you see the heads it were holding slowly fall from it's body. The heads appeared to be perfectly preserved inside the sacks.
Auraxis will peer at the sack to see what exactly is going on in there. As carefully as he can assuming that something untoward may take place as a result.
Sister Revanche takes up a cover position, asking Graki to do the same while Auraxis investigates the heads.
Its just very odd that this creature was keeping the heads of it's victims in the sacks on it's back preserved. None of you have ever seen anything like this before.
"It appears we are meant to see more in this place and this thing is not it. Lets move along".