First amongst the Fallen IC.

[Grailkeeper]

The 117th Chapter of the Sons of Horus had had a glorious history during the great crusade and the great insurrection. The tides of fate had not been as favourable in the subsequent years. Ever since the death of Brother-Captain Solvan at the Emperor's palace and the assumption of the role of leadership by Devron Kayruth, things had gone from bad to worse and a once noble chapter devolved into an obscure warband. It has been ten thousand years, although for you only 300 years roughly.

The latest ignomy came after the Battle for Valrona. On the aborted attack on that forest world the chapter lost its flagship to it's former brothers the Iron Warriors. With it went most of your armour, relics and trophies. The Battlefield losses and subsequent defections cost the warband between 40 and 60% of its manpower. It was after this disgrace that the warband gained its shame-name "The Fallen". Your brothers in the legion despise you and those in other legions openly mock you.

You sit in high orbit above Cadia in your only remaining starcraft, "Might Makes Right", a Cobra Destroyer once wrestled from the Imperial Navy. The Despoiler having denied the Fallen the right to make war on Cadia at this stage of the Crusade.

You have been summoned to one of the flight decks by Lord Kayruth.

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox strides in, his own Terminator armor moving smoothly across the deck. The armor is relatively new and shows it, its polished black and gold surface coated in a reflective sheen. His Lightning Claw, affixed to his right gauntlet, swings slowly through the air. His black helmet, sculpted into the fierce visage of a tusked, snarling war-daemon, turns to meet Lord Kayruth's gaze. Slightly glowing red lenses stare at the Chaos Lord. Polthrox nods a bit in respect.

"Greetings, Lord Kayruth. You bid me come."

[DrK]

Malich strides onto the bridge purposefully. The blue and gold trim of the Thousand Sons still edging the dark and battered armour that clads him. In his hands the infamouse Staff of Change - once in the possession of the Sorcerer Auramagma Captain of the 8th Legion until his untimely passing and now the sorcerer-aspirant Malich's most prized possession.

Looking about the bridge, cloak swirling about him and the golden blue flame of Tzeentch hanging around his neck. Looking at the Black Legionaries on the bridge he gives a short bow.

"As was requested so have I come Lord Kayruth. What would you have of the sorceries of the Changer of Ways?"

[watupwithdat]

All of a sudden an Astartes with black armour and blood red shoulder pads entered the deck snarling with impatience and frustration, assuming he'd been summoned there because of something he'd done. You couldn't call Korofos well-mannered or very respectful, wielding his priced khopesh, used to decapitate its former owner, in hand even here on the deck in the presence of the leader of the warband. Then again, many believe that same leader is the cause of the warband's troubles.

Korofos could see two other of the warband standing around there already, one of the despicable witches of the Great Spouter of Lies, which prompted him to snarl some more. The other he believed was one of the Plague Father's, but he didn't care enough to think too hard to remember if that was the case.

"Who died?" Korofos said deadpan, trying to be funny. Still, he must have killed someone he shouldn't have to be summoned, he figured.

[Grailkeeper]

Your Slanneshi compatriot joins you silently.

Kayruth looks you all up and down. It is impossible to judge what he is thinking. His distinctive Chtonian features clearly betray that he is a son of Horus, even if his armour no longer does. He stands flanked by his bodyguards- all dressed in battered terminator armour.

No one.... Yet.

My orders come direct from the Despoiler himself. The tides of this crusade will soon change, and with it our fortunes. The honour of that change falls to you.

I have selected you personally for this mission. Your personal devotions have not gone unnoticed. Till now our warband has been...agnostic in the ways of the warp. In order to better ourselves this may have to change.

Gentlemen, our target is a highest priority soldier of the imperium. The vector for deployment will be by drop-pod. When in place you will either execute target priority alpha our summon me to do it for you. The co-ordinates have been provided by our pet turncoat here, who will also accompany you on your mission as a sign of our "Trust" in him. He carries our last remaining teleport homer, keyed to my frequency. He will also aid you in your X-fil.


With this he gestures to the human beside him, who though tall by human standards is diminutive compared to his present company.


A slow smile starts to spread across Kayruths face. He looks nothing if not like a smaller version of Abaddon himself, though few would dare say so in the despoilers hearing range..

Gentlemen, your target is none other than the commander of the loyalist resistance... Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox's eyes widen marginally, but with his helmet on it is impossible for others to see it. Obviously Abaddon has no expectation that this mission will succeed, otherwise he would not have delegated it to us. So clearly it is to be a distraction from something. But what? Polthrox muses in his head.

Out loud, Polthrox says, "How are you proposing our drop pod breach the countless air-defense batteries that will surely be in place around Creed's position, lord?"

[watupwithdat]

Korofos listened to what was said. Instead of him having killed someone, evidently someone needed killing. Then he broke out in a sudden explosive muffled laughter, as his external vox had been disabled but his armour not being anywhere near airtight enough to hinder the sound of laughing from escaping. Creed? He had to force himself to calm down. Maybe he'd miss something important said. He activated his external vox again. "I can do killing." he said, pretty sure that this particular target was out of their reach and there was something else going on. No matter. Khorne didn't care much who he killed, as long as he did. Korofos was of pretty much the same opinion anyway.

[DrK]

The sorcerer-aspirant tips his head in a questioning way. "My Lord. Entire regiments have failed to approach the Castellan. How can we succeed when the continent is soaked with the blood of those who have failed?"

Sighing he wondered what machination of the great Changer this was but waited patiently fo the Warlord to expound more. "My Lord, who is this turncoat?"

[Fearan]

Isidoros answered his warlord's summoning in silence, and likewise silent did he listen to the mission briefing. But then, he yet again saw the reason of the warbnd's latest failings - doubt. Doubt in the voice of hulking warrior in tactical dreadnaught armor, doubt in the voice of the sorcerer. Stangely, but only the despisable axe-worshipper had shown some resolve. And he couldn't remain silent.
Fools - the serpentine hiss of Thrice Forgotten filled the command chamber - Those, who watch over the air-defences are only humans. They can be bribed, seduced, intimidated, or simply killed. We are Legion, not some useless mooks. We won't be sent on a meaningless death in a droppod - our death will come only from our failings. And as for Creed himself - he is also nothing but human. My Lord - Isidoros adressed Kayruth -I am honored to be chosen for this mission. My life is yours

[Grailkeeper]

You may consider this mission to be suicide. I'll tell you what suicide really is. Suicide is disobeying a direct order from the only Astarte ever to rival a Primarch. Suicide will also very definitely include refusing my order to get in that damn drop pod.

Kayruth's bodyguards shift into a more combat orientated stance. The sound of combi melta's being clicked on can be heard, and the chains on a chain fist go from off to idling.

Kayruth gestures to the turn coat with the relic blade that was once Captain Solvan's, His name is Sebastian Thor, and he has already been responsible for the deaths of more Cadian High Command than the Battle for Tyrok Fields

Thor speaks up. I trained under the Alpha legion, when Abaddon was finished with my services I was indentured to your warband.

Creed travels in top secrecy and top security wherever he is needed most. He is guarded 26 hours a day by his Elite Praetorians. These men were with him since his whiteshield days and function like no human storm troopers you have ever met before.

I managed to obtain his location for the coming week before I was forced to return to the warmaster. My cover was not blown though it may be of less use when black legionnaires are at my back. We will drop outside the capital, Kasr Primaris, where he will be reviewing the troops at the Dornian Fields as a moral boosting excercise. Their moral plummet as their saviour dies in front of them. This is a propaganda excercise on their behalf, I iinsured security would be at a minimum ostensibly to provide 'contempt in the face of the enemy' for the holo cameras. A single drop pod is unlikely to be noticed by the few orbital scanners and is likely to outspeed what little anticraft defences will be there.

You can then fight your way out via spacefield near the reviewing platform. Your survival then depends on your ability to evade the thunder bolts and mauraders that will almost certainly be providing top cover. They incidentally are the reason we'll be entering via fell claw instead of by thunderhawk.

Time is of the essence in this mission. If it is not completed in under 12 hours Creed will have moved to another location and I don't have access to his future movements.

I won't lie, you probably all wont make it back. I certainly dont expect to.

With this surprising candor the traitor marches over to the drop pod and enters.

[watupwithdat]

Suicide? Korofos scoffed at the notion. And he doubted the human had slain barely three or four men out of all those deaths he was "responsible for" with his own hands. Having trained under the Alpha Legion made that even more obvious to Korofos. They always sculked in the shadows, taking roundabout ways to do things instead of just slaughtering their way to their goals. A bunch of cowards, they are.

"This will be fun." the Savage said bluntly, followed by a short obnoxious laughter befitting a bloodthirsting follower of the Khorne, as he waved his khopesh around.

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox eyes the bodyguards nervously, but holds his ground. His lightning claw crackles briefly in response to his emotional surge, before he shuts it down again.

"Of course, lord." he says, as he marches and enters the pod.

Once in the pod, Polthrox looks at the little human. "And just what makes you so cheerful about your own imminent death? You should know that whatever promises have been made of a pleasurable afterlife have been a lie. This close to the Eye, and in the middle of a Black Crusade, the Warp will be churning with daemons. If you die here, your soul will be mercilessly devoured."

[DrK]

The sorcerer gives a short salutebl before striding away towards the drop pods. I do wonder the great changer has planned. Have I displeased him? he mused silently as he strapped himself into the pod.

Looking at his brother marines he opens an open vox, Shall we attuned to frequency 999. Switching to the private channel he awaits confirmation from the others.

[Henry the 57th]

"Confirming." Polthrox says, as he switches to the channel.

[watupwithdat]

Korofos just snarled at the sorcerer's "request" as he fastened the khopesh to his side and himself in the pod. He then reluctantly, and with some minor stumbling, switched the frequency for his internal vox without confirming anything. He could always use it to insult someone when they were out of earshot range, he rationalized.

[Grailkeeper]

You enter the Drop pod. It sways noticebly under the weight of tactical dreadnaught armour. Being in such close proximity to a worshipper of nurgle is not a pleasant experience. The human looks like a child sitting in his throne, his legs dangling over the side

As the doors seal you hear a snatch of Kayruths swearing "sted Imperial interceptors"

This is immediately followed by a nightmarishly loud explosion, the sound reverberating all around with you in the center. You feel gravity shift and the drop pod falls at an almost ninty degree angle. The familiar heavy feeling of increasing G's that accompanies every successful drop is absent. Instead you feel the pod tumbling end over end through space. Speech is impossible leaving only the possibility of vox messaging. The pod accelerates as it's caught by the planet's gravity well.

A garbled message from Kayruth chimes over your vox. Much of it is lost to static or is garbled beyond recognition hsssks.+++rced retrea......Imperi........compl......ission....... . parameters unchanged....... DO NOT......hsssssk...death awaits............ HSSSSK....HSSSK.....Creed....Repeat....Must...comp l...hssssssssssssssss+++


At this stage you can hear nothing but the sound of the drop pod falling through the atmosphere, at speeds beyond which even it was designed to travel. The pod is lit only by a strobing red emergency light. There is a sudden hammering noise like Khorne himself smashing you on his brazen anvil. Everything goes black.

[Grailkeeper]

You wake up. Not much time has passed since impact. You can tell because the blood on your visor is still wet.

The doors of the pod have not deployed and you are forced to open them manually by force. Once you do so daylight reveals terrible news both inside and outside the pod.

The turncoat is dead. A large piece of metal- several feet long and almost a foot wide protrudes through his chest armour, propping him out of his throne to an almost standing angle. He was on the side of the pod that took the brunt of the impact. His once pristine robes are now a sodden scarlet, the impact killed him instantly.

Outside you can see you are far from anything resembling the Cadian capital. You have landed in mountains over looking a much smaller Cadian Settlement. A pall of smoke lies lazily over the settlement. Its considerable defences have been breached. Most Cadian cities are laid out like a maze, so as to trap invaders. Whoever invaded this city avoided this by simply blasting large pathways across the city, which all meet in the center. It looks almost like a chaos star. You can't see any encampments outside the city but you can hear occaisonal light gunfire.

[DrK]

Staggering slightly Malich kicks against the side of the pod several times before one of the fractured ceramite plates gives way. His helmet autosenses compensate for the dusty sunlight dimming hurriedly and he stand up straight stretching out his bruised and battered body. Cursed creature he thought loking at the wreckage of the pod. And so our link to the easy assassination fades and dies. What strange patterns the great changer weaves.

Looking down at the battered settlement he activates the helmates optical enhancers scanning for anything that may threaten them. Seeking to see the skeins of power flowing through the region he tapped into his fell sorceries staring through the strange headpiece of the staff of Change before seeking to see anything moving in the area. Either allied or enemy or anything that may have tracked their fall.

A vexed hiss as he fails to tap into the faint skeins of warp energy that enwrap this planet.

Spoiler

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Unfettered Prenatural awareness (1d100)[98] TN 65
- Grants Unnatural Perception 2

Awareness using sight (1d100)[60] TN 65
- 45 + 10 autosenses, +10 Heightened senses
- Possibly +1 DoS from Unnatural senses +2

Glancing back to the pod and his comrades that are slowly moving he speaks loudly enough for them to hear without resorting to the vox that may be tracked or detected. "Comarades. We appear to have landed. But we have lost our pet traitor. His premonition of not survibg the mission was indeed accurate. Though maybe more sudden than he was expecting..." the thought punctuated by a small giggle.

"We should search his little frame to see if he has anything useful in his possession."

[watupwithdat]

All the blood splattered in the pod had made Korofos amused. He let out a booming laugh as he violently unfastened himself and made his way to the corpse of the human traitor. He felt a little disappointed he was not the one who had impaled the human as he pulled the body off of the metal rod and searched the body for anything that caught his interest. Of course, there's nothing. Apart from the teleportation homer. Which the sorcerer probably wants, anyway.

Finished with the corpse the Savage left the pod, still holding the human in his clenched gauntlet and threw it down on the ground, the dead body sliding towards the sorcerer's feet. "Take a look what you can find wyrd." he said, and then inspected his priced possessions for damage. The khopesh was bloodstained, he noticed, and snarled. Bloodstains on his weapon from someone he hadn't killed annoyed him greatly. Korofos activated the weapon's powerfield, and the blood which stained it quickly evaporated. As good as new he thought, and took a look around, now being the first time he actually had really looked at his surroundings.

Spoiler

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Awareness test to look around: (1d100)[41] vs 59

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox strides out the door, his Terminator plate having shielded him from too much harm. What he had discovered was that pounding his head on the inside of the helmet hurt like frag.

Of course this happens. Just our luck, really. he thinks bitterly as he looks around.

Spoiler

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(1d100)[51] vs. 90 (40 + 10 (Enhanced Senses) + 10 Autosenses + 30 (Auspex))

[DrK]

Malich gently stirred the human's body with the Staff of Change. The blood fizzing, warping and mutating as tentacle sprouted and fur and horns grew at odd angles as the warping touch infected the body. "Ruined" he muttered sadly picking up the blood soaked map. "But not all bad. We may need this should the time come to leave this 5 fold forsaken world."

He holds up the teleport homer and clips it to his utility belt. And if I'm carrying it then none of these fool worshipping compaions can abandon me here. The thoghts of betrayal unbidden coming to his warped mind.

[Fearan]

With one strong jump, Isidoros left the wreck. Delight of steppind on the soil of enemy's planet had nearly overwhelmed him. The servant of Slaanesh had recovered his dreaded weapon from the remains of droppod and turned around just to see the sorcerer claiming the teleport homer for himself. Fool. He only makes himself a target - he thought, but said nothing about it. Instead he looked up to the sky and stated, adressing no one in particular
Servants of the corpse-emperor will probably send a group to recover the wreck and to make sure, that no-one of us is alive. We shouldn't dissapoint them - let's make a warm welcome

[Grailkeeper]

You stop to take stock of your surroundings. The settlement appears to be about 5-6 miles squared in size. Its about 10 miles away so a few hours travel should get you there without difficulty. The buildings appear to be on average 4 stories tall and are a dull tan colour. At its center where the pathways converge is a large basilica, the largest building in the settlement. The streets appear to be deserted. It seems like any fighting is for the most part over, although nearly every building displays signs of damage and many are ruined. The gunfire does not sound like any kind of sustained battle.

The standard defence works that surround any Cadian city have been plowed through, and although it is too far away to see clearly definitely look abandoned. It definitely looks like there was a battle here in the not too distant past.

Coming through your helm you can hear a weak broadcast coming from somewhere in the city, it keeps repeating Imperial Dogma urging you to overthrow the invaders. It mentions their headquarters defiling the city. It also seems to give troop movements in locations you are unfamiliar with. Eventually the preacher stops and prerecorded message plays on repeat "+++Every four seconds a soldier of the arch enemy dies on Cadia, one..two..three...four .Every four seconds a soldier of the arch enemy dies on Cadia, one... two.. three... four.Every four seconds a soldier of the arch enemy dies on Cadia, one..two..three..four+++."

[DrK]

Malich glances down at the settlement, "So a long walk my friends..." he mutters as he stares down at the settlement. We may find some sport or some anwers down there."

Once more he reaches out to the skeins of fate to discern anything unusual in the area and search for any nearby buildings, farms or outposts that may hold a village.

Scanning around he considers the local terrain featues to get an idea of where on Cadia in relation to the capital they may be.

Spoiler

Show

Unfettered Prenatural awareness (1d100)[12] TN 65
- gives unnatural senses (2)
- With that roll ~ +7 Initiative
- Sustaining as free action

Awareness (1d100)[48] TN 65

Navigate (surface) (1d100)[96] TN ~45

[Grailkeeper]

There is nothing else in the area- Cadian settlements are built like fortresses- nothing outside the city defences.

You're unable to tell where on the planet you are.

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox attempts to listen in on his vox to see if there are any friendly forces transmitting in the area.

[DrK]

With a sad sigh as he can't see anything moving he continues to hold to the skeins of the warp keeping him alert for any danger he looks to the others. 10 Miles... should not take too long save for our mouldering colleague here.."

he nods towards the stilted and rotting Nurgle Brother before waiting to see if the others follow as he begins a lilting jog towards the broken settlement...

[Grailkeeper]

Polthrox

Spoiler

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This far from the settlement you can't pick up anything.

[Henry the 57th]

Polthrox sighs as he picks up nothing. Typical. Just plain typical.

"I suppose we have no choice, do we?"Polthrox strides after Malich, ignoring the sorcerer's crude insults.

[watupwithdat]

Korofos was in his own world as he followed the rest, playing with his khopesh, swinging it wildly cutting apart phantom foes. He was bored, and he wanted to kill something. He held down deep urges to cut down the sorcerer, just for the hell of it, and that the Blood God would approve.