To Solomon

The short farewell is followed by hectic activity. The acolytes are sent to a waiting speeder, and just before the vehicle rises into the polluted skies over Hive Sibellus, a menial hands in a portable stummer – a final gift. A few hours later, the acolytes are on board of the Hand of Finn, cobra-class destroyer and part of the Saint Urthur squadron, unexpectedly and hurriedly commanded by Battlefleet Calixis to reinforce orbital defences in the Solomon system.

Mercifully, the voyage through the warp is without incident this time. The two guests are shunned by the ratings and ignored by the officers: strange cargo to be delivered safely and without fuss. They spent the time training in a disused cargo hold and familiarizing themselves with the destination of their voyage: Solomon, classified as hive world, population 13 billion, seat of the Chancellery Court. Tithe exactus maxima. Although the air on the surface is scrubbed by block sized atmosphere cleaners spread all over this dying world, visitors are advised to keep respirators and chem coats close to them at all times. Sometimes, the acolytes see signs of other passengers, locked away in the belly of the ship: forced immigrants and indentures bound for a world so polluted and used up that it is no longer able to sustain its population level, and adepts and scribblers sent to do the Emperor’s work in the Chancellery Court. Solomon is an ancient, played-out world, and the passengers on the Finn mirror its terminal tiredness.

After a few weeks in the warp, the Saint Urthur squadron drops out of the Empyrean over Solomon. The world shows the ravages of nearly a millennium of unmitigated industrial use. Its landmasses are colored red and orange, with the large hive structures and massive blast railways and pipelines clearly visible from orbit. Its seas are black and covered by roiling storm clouds. Near the hives, the seas shimmer as megatons of chemical effluvia are streaming into the poisoned waters. No polar ice caps remain. Hundreds of craft litter the skies above the planet, transports, freighters, warships of all sizes.

Drizz and Yuri are bundled into an aquila-lander bound for the Chancellery Court and have to share the craft with a dozen ashen faced subaltern scriveners, fingering their lucky charms and black books. After a drop of twenty minutes, the lander comes to rest on the huge airfield of the Chancellery Court. It disgorges the acolytes and the whimpering scriveners and howls back into the skies. To the left and right of our heroes, scores of landers drop in and blast off – Drizz cannot help but think of an orbital invasion, but instead of warriors here are brigades of sullen adepts, grimly weaving their scrolls, dataslates and records, stumbling out of the landing craft, with waves of defeated men streaming from the monumental building before the acolytes. It is this dark giant that houses the final arbiter of all questions judiciary in the Calixis Sector, a power even sector governor Hax on Scintilla has to obey – in theory. Large green stablights fail to illuminate the façade of the black behemoth, the dreaded Chancellery Court, where a legion of judges, adepts, ministerials, scriveners and data-helots weigh, compare and deliberate, often for decades, where the fates of whole worlds are decided with the flick of a quill. A whole galaxy of advisors, fix-makers, intercessors and flunkies mills before this mountain of black stone, its only ornament a huge clock face, showing the thirteen hours of Solomon’s day cycle. A flight of steps large enough to accommodate a dozen regiments of the imperial guard leads to the massive gates of the Court. On the stairs, supplicants, heirs of lesser consequence and utter beggars, to weak for the trek up ´to the gate, wait for word from the halls of the court. Some of them have been living in their makeshift tents for years, cared for by water merchants and the so-called good friars-on-the-steps, waiting for a verdict.

The acolytes hurry along, pausing only to hand over their weapons to one of the innumerable guard posts, receiving a paper slip with an astronomically high number on it in return. Then they enter the great halls of the Chancellery Court. They register the rows upon rows of typing menials, the clouds of servoskulls carrying missives, scrolls and parchments, the little clots and groups of high and low officials, filling the halls with a never-ending murmur, and their hearts sink. Finding Marr is going to be a nightmare. But the Inquisition brooks no delay. A heavily augmented adept in a slate-colored robe accosts them. After making sure of their identity, the insufferable official leads them to a rickety elevator. He answers the acolytes’ questions with barely hidden arrogance and irritating curtness - every word is a reprimand for their tardiness and ignorance, a lament for those being kept from their real tasks and duties in order to guide around boorish visitors. The acolytes learn next to nothing from him. With the briefest of farewells, the adept leaves the duo in front of room 13 on floor 39, a dusty, small balcony high over the milling, viscous chaos of the Court. Behind this little, black door under the unadorned brass marker, Marr awaits.

Pike City

Another entry in the Scorched Earth: Materials post. This time, it's Pike City, flower of the North and a town in trouble. A pdf. on rapidshare in German with a map.

Avatar: War of the Dunces

This post is full of spoilers, but you probably have already seen the movie, know that it cost about the same as a real brushfire war and that most people think that it is a good movie. Which it is. There is really a lot to see, the creatures and the forest are fantastic, the 3D works as advertised. It is a nice movie and a good time was had, but I am not going to talk about the goodness of the movie. I am going to talk about the suckiness of the warfare. Even General Custer would have done better. Just four things that came to me while watching the movie:

1. The Sky People are stupid
- So you are a spacefaring race, and you have a nice fat colony ship in orbit. There is a holy site on the ground which want to blow up badly (Ooooh, so badly).
Why not take the big fat orbital lifter, go into orbit and drop 50 tons of steel from 100 klicks up. Or dump one of the big yellow excavator/forest-murderer machines on the Na'vis' Holy of Holies, if you really want to make a point. Delivering explosives basically by hand on site is just asking for massive interference and blowed-up helicopters. At least drop the daisy cutter from a height were the natives can't breathe.
- The useless pretty-boy colonel. The stupid seeps from him like tasty, tasty molasses. He kicks open a door and opens his command center to the poisonous atmosphere of the planet, risking everyone inside, just to demonstrate his incompetence with the SMG. Instead, like, having two choppers on 24h standby, on a world that teems with aerial predators. Also, getting out of that exploding gunship was darn impressive, but the guy was basically jonesing for a knife fight all the damn movie, and that was probably the only way he was going to get one. A bowie knife on a mech? That shit would get you laughed out of even the more hand-to-hand inclined space marine chapters. Someone should have set up the colonel with a nice bar brawl or, you know, a roll in the hay. That would have nipped many problems in the bud. The guy might be able to bench-press half a ton, but the space beneath his steely hair is empty.

2. The Na'vi are useless
- Was nobody briefed about the Sky People's tremendous capability to concentrate fire on an approaching front? Or did Sully sleep in school? Was there a mistake in translation? "Just charge the firing line with your big blue horses. Just right at the three dozen goons who each have a machine gun or automatic cannon. The bad guys will turn and run. On earth, this tactic works. Every. Single. Time. History proves it, from about 1914 onwards." Of course they get their asses handed to them in a spray of blue mist. For me, it smacks of a political decision: Nobody liked the horse people that much, so they got set up in a big fat decoy/ martyr mission, and in the following massacre, they were weakened for generations, facilitating a push of the forest people into the plains. They probably do not whoop and hiss in the pure and proper way, like the good forest people do. I thought these guys were jungle fighters, bred from minute one to deal silent death in the bush. So were are the traps, the ambushes and the swift arrow into the coolant tubes?
- I know it's good for morale, but putting the leader on the big read bird, where even the useless pretty-boy colonel can identify him from three miles off is just stupid.
- So you have this chopper of the enemy and a sympathetic pilot. Why wait while all the clans make up their minds and come to the meeting place at about twenty miles a day. Stuff that sucker full of your most aggressive warriors right now and dump them in the Sky People's base. Tell them to target windows and air locks. Or hijack the orbital lifter, drive it to about 2000 meters high, turn it around and switch on the burners , transfer the infiltrators to butterfly dragons (or glorious martyrdom) and drop the ship on the station.

So, in conclusion, the two antagonistic parties flail around like toddlers in blindfolds, and sacrifice people and materiel for nothing while the mournful Horner-score blares in the background, until the planet itself gets sick of the commotion and throws the newcomers off. As I said, it is a nice movie, but if you want a film by Cameron where humans and aliens are fighting (relatively) smart, rent Aliens.

The other master

The inquisitor beckons her two servants from the cage. She wastes no time with small talk. After a short greeting, she uncovers the reason for the hasty summons, a three-word code telling Yuri and Drizz to appear with all haste and to bring all the equipment they need in the service of the Golden Throne. “Someone used his political clout to force a carta mutuum dedit. A rarely employed tool within the Holy Ordos. It pleads for the temporary use of a member’s private resources, like a warp-capable ship or a personal library, without stating the purpose of that use, citing utter secrecy and urgency. To use it on someone’s personal retainers is nearly unheard off, but certainly possible.” She coughs. “Inquisitor Marr of Solomon is in urgent need of your assistance, and he resorted to the carta to take you from me, if only for a time. It is most peculiar. The destroyer Hand of Finn is bound to the Solomon system and only waits for your arrival to leave dock. As soon as you reach Solomon, seek out Marr in the Chancellery Court. He will brief you on your duties personally. Obey him as you would obey me.”

The acolytes are shocked, although they are wise enough to hide their surprise. Drizz is the first to recover: “M’lady, two questions, if I may.” Inquisitor von Shech nods. “Who is this Inquisitor Marr, that he may command your resources in this way? What does he want of us, of all people? How does he even know that we serve you?” After a short pause, the inquisitor answers: “He is an old and powerful member of the Ordos Calixis, and as connected as one can be, although he is far away from the politics of the Tricorn Palace. Even hidden away on Solomon, he is lord of a vast network of spies and informants. Whatever his reasons to ask for you specifically: They will be well-founded on knowledge. He extended himself when he wrote this carta, and do not doubt that I will exact my price for this. The carta itself stays vague on the nature of your employ; it only states the temporary nature of it. If you survive.”

“What if he wants to employ us in some heretical scheme? He might use us instead of his personal acolytes to pull off an unsavory gambit. We would be deniable assets to him. Maybe he wants to use us to blacken your name. What should we do in this case?”

“You serve the Emperor first. I trust you to act appropriately if Marr has strayed from the path of the righteous. You will bring no shame upon me: You’ve proven to be excellent independent agents on the His Omniscience, when she traveled far from the Emperor’s light. I have no reason to suspect that your abilities decreased in the mean time. On the other hand: The carta is officially presented to the Conclave, even if only a very small number of inquisitors know of it now. If Marr uses you for heretical or radicalist aims, his responsibility would become common knowledge among his peers in short time. Finally: Marr would know of easier ways to recruit cat’s paws than to use the carta and ship you across the sector.” She smiles again, but privately, her acolytes are not persuaded of Marr’s good intentions. Drizz speaks up: “One last request, if I may: As our report clearly states, our success on the His Omniscience rested firmly on our ability to keep our communication secret even in a environment as treacherous as a Adeptus Mechanicus explorator vessel. Delian Cassano employed a powerful stummer for this purpose. At the moment, we do not have such a device at our disposal. Would our kind mistress deign to help us in this regard? I plead not for our personal safety, but only to be able to serve you in the future as a faithful servant.” The inquisitor smiles: Maybe it is Drizz’ readiness to suspect Marr of foul play, or maybe his new-found verbosity. He seems to take to the role of a minor noble with gusto, even though he stems from a rough tent on a windswept desert. “I will see to it that such a device will find its way to you. But time is of the essence. Leave now for Solomon.” With that, she points to the elevator. With a short bow, the two men leave the cold sanctum of their mistress. Behind them, in the darkness, the robotic manipulator lifts another skull from the endless pile, scans it, measures it, and takes it away.

Albirte von Shech VII

The two men stride through the mass of mourners. As they approach the ziggurat, one of the black priests holds them up and leads them to a rickety brass elevator set into a deep niche of the shadowy building. The priest’s fingers flick across a tarnished keypad and the cage opens for the acolytes. An interminable, slow descent begins. As always, the acolytes wonder why their master has ordered them to appear. A new mission? A reprimand, perhaps? Drizz thinks uneasily about the dozen red books hidden in a disused power substation, volumes detailing the life cycles, technology and tactics of various xenos races, among them the abominable Hrud. It is, of course, proscribed knowledge. Has he been found out? He knows that her eyes are everywhere.
The brass cage passes empty storage corridors, morgues and tombs. Not a single living thing inhabits these cold and silent halls. Soon, the chants and cries of the mourners and the rattling and hissing of the crematoria fade away, and only the tink-tink-tink of the descending cage can be heard. Finally, the elevator shudders to a halt in the deepest level of mortuarium VII, an ancient dissection theatre, now the lair of the acolytes’ mistress. The elevator opens into a circular room ten paces across. It is a dark and painfully cold place, its iron walls partly frosted over. Most of the ghostly blue light comes from a large observation window facing the elevator, looking out into a monumental hall, its floor covered with the skulls of the imperial dead. Now and then, a robotic manipulator lowers itself from the vaulted ceiling of the hall and picks up a single skull, studies and measures it, and takes it away. In front of this window stands a massive dissection table made from black marble, resting on two bowed, blindfolded caryatids. On its slightly indented surface lie a profusion of musty books bound in unwholesome leathers, strange and sharp instruments from silver and brass, parchments and dataslates.
A willowy figure rests her hands on the black table. She seems at the edge of forty, although the marble-like quality of her skin shows the traces of many rejuvenat treatments. One familiar with the elite of the Imperium would put her age close to a hundred. She wears a black, armored corset and piles her black hair high: a mourning garb passed out of fashion some twenty years on Hive Sibellus. Massive silver rings cover her long fingers, and long needles fasten her hair. Even a fool would notice that these rings and needles are weapons, most likely of xenos manufacture and thus a sign of incomparable wealth and influence. As the doors of the elevator finally open, the woman moves away from the table, getting into full view of the acolytes. Even if this not their first meeting by a long shot, the men shudder when they see the legs of their mistress: Just below the knees, the limbs part into four articulated silver stalks, like the legs of a spider. With low clicking and whirring sounds, they carry the woman across the room, giving her movement an unnatural elegance. She seems to glide like a dancer on ice, a beautiful and effortless motion, as long as you are able to take your eyes from her many silver legs. With a low chuckle, the woman welcomes the acolytes. She is Inquisitor Albirte von Shech VII, of the Ordo Hereticus, scion of an old and noble house and the undisputed master of mortuarium VII.

Acolytes!

In these posts I will depict what happens in our Dark Heresy: Tattered Fates campaign. Thus, there will be plenty of spoilers for people who want to play this set of adventures. You have been warned. I shall also refrain from explaining the background of Dark Heresy. I assume that you know about the Empire of Man, Him on Terra, the Warp, and the agents of the Golden Throne. The group consists of only two characters, who are at about 3500pts at this point. Their adversaries have been adjusted to this level. We started off with “The House of Dust and Ash”, a preliminary adventure to the campaign, contained in the fine sourcebook “Disciples of the Dark Gods”.

Mortuarium VII is a hallowed place, where thousands of dead are burned every day. Resting a mile beneath the surface of Hive Sibellus on Scintilla, Mortuarium VII is a tomb, a sanctum, a factory, and a laboratory. It is a hollow cylinder two hundred paces across, its walls honeycombed with tombs and coffin-holes and blackened by the soot and dust of centuries of use, its vaulted ceiling lost high in the darkness. In the middle of this dark and echoing space stands a ziggurat, crowned by huge statue of a black angel wielding scythe and hourglass. The face of the angel is hidden by a heavy cowl, but its gaze seems to fix on the visitor as he enters the mortuarium. Large iron smokestacks snake between the folded wings of the angel, blowing the ash of the burned dead up through the layers of the hive and into the atmosphere of Scintilla. The angel towers like a giant over the dead and the living. Solemn priests with long, black staves and greenish lanterns guide the mourners with their oblong bundles, wrapped into shrouds, carried on biers and in lacquered sedan-chairs, through fields of votive tablets and grave markers towards the maw of the ziggurat, where skull-faced servitors take over the mourners’ burden and the flames finally claim the dead.

Two men stand out in the mass milling in the large entrance to the Mortuarium. It is less their clothing or their weapons – nobles will take their bodyguards wherever they go – but rather the routine they exhibit while moving through the grieving masses. It seems like these two are not here to fulfill some solemn duty or to visit the dear departed, but on an errand, which, while pressing, is essentially mundane. They move in the shadow of the black angel like merchants on a busy trading floor or travelers on a well-known train station. The larger of the men is a dusky fellow with a proud face and long, black, straight hair. A short but dense beard covers his chin. On first sight one could take him for a noble from Malfi, but his skin is too dark for a son of that world. Getting closer, you would see the spider’s web of scars covering his face – even his eyelids are covered by the old traces of short, but deep cuts. And you would notice his eyes and the strange fire within them.
A dark blue cloak barely covers his silvery armor, a carapace worthy of a Kasrkin, with scenes of an ancient battle and clashing horsemen etched into the metal breastplate. A large laspistol and a sword of uncommon form and design dangle from the belt on this armor. He carries the helmet of this valuable suit under his arm: It is fully enclosed with a void seal and crowned with golden laurels.

His companion is far less conspicuous in his dark grey trousers and vest, and the leather hat drawn deep into his face. But some mourners close to him gasp and avert their gaze: His lank figure, white-grey skin and his colorless hair mark him as a voidborn, a member of those unhallowed tribes sailing the empty abyss between the worlds of the Imperium, with the poison of void and warp seeping into their genes. The voidborn is armed to the teeth, with two straight blades strapped across his back, a heavy handgun holstered at his belt and two weighty Irontalon pistols under his armpits, rapid firing sidearms usually restricted to officers of the Imperial Navy, with long barrels and weighty grips, sturdy enough to serve as clubs if their ammo runs out. His baggy, utilitarian clothes hide an armored mesh body glove – and many other items which a man of his trade might find useful. Among all this lethal hardware, the leather whip wound at his thigh seems more like a badge of office than a weapon. These two men are Drizz Al’Rahman, imperial psyker from far Tallarn, and Yuri Orlov, voidborn assassin and formerly the whip and spymaster of captain Leif Morgenstern of the Ribald Pilgrim. They are agents of the Golden Throne, acolytes of the Holy Ordos – the Inquisition, the shadowy and much-feared organization known as the left hand of the Emperor.

Schweinkram

I was eating out with my parents. The conversation turned to my spotting of Helmut Markwort just the day before in a dingy Starbucks. As I described seeing this august person in the (prodigious) flesh for the first time, my mother interrupted me. "Do write about stuff like that. People want to read about stuff like that." My father cut in "It needs a nice title. Direct. How about Schweinkram?" Back to my mother "That would be sure to be success. You'd only need to take out the secretary of a publishing house for a nice cup of coffee, she gives the manuscript to the man in charge. You sell a million books, get one euro per book, and, bang, you're a millionaire. Only a single million, but still."

And that was the career advice for today.