Sea of Stars - IC

[Kaptin Keen]

Already on it. Grunts - form up. Bring those plasma grenades. And if anyone has been secretly hiding a rocket launcher and a crate of krak missiles, bring it to me. Move out!

Felidae runs off for the shuttle bays, gathering men as she goes.

[Destro_Yersul]

"We can get there. Keep them off us."

No sooner had Hannabel cut the connection than a decrepit Arvus appeared, powering out of concealment on the wreck at the best speed it could muster. It wasn't fast. The engines were cutting in and out as the pilot pushed them to their limits trying to get away from the wreckers. Gases vented from the shuttle at intervals, the armour plating pitted, scored, and barely holding together. The Hollow Men turned, their trajectory changing to track the shuttle. If they managed to catch it, the weaponless Arvus would have no chance.

The wreckers were gaining, too. With the damaged engines, the lighter wasn't capable of outpacing them. It might reach the Sting before the Hollow Men reached it, but it would be a close run thing.

[Leon]

++Suppress those things, we have their sensor data now++

Spoiler

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Input Target info into Defense Turrets Tech Use TN 83 61

[Haval]

'Let's see how you like being shot at by a bigger gun.' Anika will see if she can help plot a firing solution on the nearest Hollow Men.

Spoiler: ooc

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70 versus 63 on a Lock on Target roll

[PotatoGolem]

Anika, get a lock on those things! All turrets, fire on the Hollow Men! Macharius looks around the command deck. Someone get a scan on that lighter, make sure it's not a bomb or the like. Pytho, keep an eye out for warp abnormalities and accompany Felidae- I want to be sure that our new guests aren't more than they seem.

Spoiler: OOC

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Inspiring Leader on Anika, making Lock On a success, and PYBIT on the turrets (can't actually fail that roll, so they get +5)

[rax]

"Helm, see if you can drift us towards that lighter. The longer they have to run, the worse their chances of making it. Turrets, on my mark, open fire on the Hollow Men. Ready? FIRE!"

Spoiler: Shooting da turrets

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(1d100)[86] vs. 70 (BS 60, +5 Lock on Target, +5 Put Your Backs Into It!)
Pre-emptive re-roll from Mastery of Gunnery (1d100)[17]

[Destro_Yersul]

Hannabel walked a few shots towards the group of Hollow Men pursuing the lighter. The first volley went sailing past, but when they didn't disperse, the second volley was pinpoint accurate, blowing several wreckers to atoms. The lighter swept in under the fire from the turrets, limping towards the indicated landing bay. When it became clear they wouldn't catch the lighter, at least not without withering under the guns of the Sting, the wreckers broke off the attack and vanished back into the debris field.

The Arvus' engines finally blew out for good, the damaged shuttle covering the last burst of distance to the ship on thrusters alone. It didn't sweep into the bay so much as crawl, dropping the the deck and sinking down on corroded landing struts. It settled to the side, listing slightly, the viewports cracked and weathered, the armour pitted and scarred by countless collisions. When the bay finished pressurising, and Felidae led the marines out in formation, the back hatch disengaged, opening with a sigh and dropping to the deck. The occupants marched out, a small group of haggard men and women in scavenged void suits, carrying a collection of damaged and poorly repaired weaponry at their sides. They drew up before the marines, standing as tall as they could, and saluted Felidae.

"Thank you. They've been coming after us more frequently of late, and you're the only outsiders we've seen in a long time."

They were clearly human, hardened by a lifetime of alternatively fighting and running, eking out a living scrounging from the hulks on the fringes of this damned place. If there was one thing that seemed off, it was their eyes. They stared past the marines, sunken, haunted. Felidae had seen that look before, in the eyes of survivors pulled from the battlefield. Lone survivors, found hunkered in the shells of burned out vehicles or lying in puddles of blood at the bottoms of deep craters.

[Kaptin Keen]

Well, I'm hardly the proper person, but since I'm here, let me be the first to welcome you aboard the Manticore's Sting, under Lord Captain Macharius, a rogue trader of no little repute. I'm expecting you'll be placed into quarentine until we've ascertained your purity and sanity, but that's not my decision to make. I also expect you'll be asked politely to hand over your weapons until such a time as quarentine ends.

Don't worry. We're the good guys.

Felidae opens a vox channel.

Boss - anything you want to add?

[Haval]

'They might actually be what they say they are.' Anika will send someone to get the new arrivals food and a medicae.

[Leon]

++Food maybe, no need for a Medicae as I am here now++
++The additional servitors from the Medbay will be here soon, till then we must begin to process these specimens++

[Destro_Yersul]

"I.. understand the possibility of quarantine," the one who had spoken already said. "Can't blame you, given where we are. Most of the old crew has gone over. They're part of the Processional now, and damn it for taking them. But you're here now, and that gives the few of us that are left, that are still ourselves... we've got a chance. To get out. If you can take us away from here, we'll serve your captain aboard this ship, or one of the others. Two years and a day, is our offer, and you'll not find a more loyal crew anywhere."

[Kaptin Keen]

Still .. yourselves?

Um, do tell me: What happened to the rest? Oh and, while you talk, private .. what's your name, soldier? .. private Hazel here will start collecting your weapons. It's just a precaution, I'm sure you understand. But by the looks of what I see, I actually think we can give you better armament .. once out of quarentine.

[Leon]

Unleashing the Medical Dendrite to wave about while she prepares some other medical equipment.

++Skull, record mode++
++Now then for a orderly line to be triage'd++

[Haval]

++Food maybe, no need for a Medicae as I am here now++

'Well, you are effective I'll give you that. Perhaps I should join you.' Anika will gesture to a junior officer who doesn't seem to be doing anything and will get to to watch the auger. 'If anything weird seems to be happening out there I want you to call me immediately.'

She'll make her way down to the survivors to speak with whoever was in charge.

[PotatoGolem]

Macharius speaks into the shipboard vox, his voice echoing out of loudspeakers. Good day and welcome to the Manticore's Sting. By the grace of the Most Holy God-Emperor, I am Lord-Captain Macharius Absalom, commander of this vessel. My officers shall prepare you for quarantine. As long as your faith in Him on Terra is true and your bodies are free of corruption you have nothing to fear.

He switches to the command-crew channel. Find out what they mean by the rest of the crew "going over" and being "part of the Processional." That sounds potentially troublesome. I'm sending Father Ornstein to monitor their spiritual health and Pytho to watch for any witchery.

[Destro_Yersul]

"We'd prefer the medicae, if it's all the same." The survivors eyed Ravia's various mechadendrites with much shuffling of feet and muttering. It probably didn't help that she'd called them specimens.

"We'll surrender our weapons, and submit to your quarantine, but we've got a request." The man cleared his throat, trying to stand a little straighter. "There are more groups around, more like us. Not many. The processional is hunting us. The ones who turned, we call them the Carrion. Between them and the Hollow Men, they'll have killed us all within a few more years. We can't keep hiding forever. We'd like you to pick up the others, and then take us with you when you leave."

[Leon]

++Don't worry it is the same. Unless you actually want one of the corpsman to see to you, well your loss++

++Skull will keep me appraised of anything interesting that develops++

[Haval]

Anika will show up at the end of that and introduce herself. 'Under the circumstances I think you need to tell me everything you know about how these Carrion come to be? I don't like the thought of our people being turned as you put it. We had enough trouble with those things outside.' The idea that some of those who dared to come here might never be able to leave was beginning to seem fitting.

[Destro_Yersul]

"It took time. We've been here for... I don't even know how long, fragmenting into smaller groups. First, there was the crew..." The speaker's voice took on the tone of recitation, trotting out a tale he had told many times before.

"When Wrath fled the system, he left behind a significant number of crew members who had been engaged in salvage operations. The Crew stuck together, claiming one of the wrecks as a base and hiding within it, building up a society within the main cargo hold. The Hollow Men were already here, back then. They travel the system, breaking down ships, taking them apart a piece at a time and carrying the remains back to Decay. They broke down the home hold, and the Crew was scattered, scavenging for food and equipment on Blight, and among the outer wrecks. Yet they were still the Crew. The groups were scattered, but they had vox sets, and they repaired more whenever they could find them. Vox systems in the processional are temperamental, and frequent replacement of parts and systems was needed. When the first of the Crew became the first of the Carrion, it was not immediately known. The lack of vox contact was assumed to be because they had run out of parts, or their set needed repair. When another group checked on their last location, they learned the truth. The Carrion were still there, but they were not there. They drifted through the hulks like ghosts, staring off into the distance, muttering prayers to the star. They have claimed many more since, so..."

He broke off, blinked a few times. "Normally I end that story with a warning. We tell it to children, to encourage them to follow the rules, or the Carrion will get them. It's true, though, as far as I know."

[Haval]

Anika will try and look on the bright side, 'So whatever is doing this can't simply take you all at once or you never would have survived this long.' Maybe these people were safer out here away from the system's star. 'If those things live anywhere in the Processional do you think you can find it for us so we can keep our distance?'

She'll relay details of this conversation to the others, 'Maybe they aren't just warp ghosts if they're scavenging for parts. Could be Xenos for all I know although I feel like getting close enough to them to find out what they're doing to people would be a bad idea.'

[Destro_Yersul]

"Hollow Men are real enough. They live on Decay, the second planet. We stay away from there."

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm curious. What are the rules you need to follow to .. not become part of 'The Carrion'? And what is that, precisely?

[Leon]

++So much for the Hullghast empire++

[Haval]

++So much for the Hullghast empire++

'It's a big galaxy, and there are a lot of wrecks out there.' Anika will call the bridge, 'What can we tell about the system's planets?'

[rax]

"That the locals have charming names for them," Hannabel replies Anika in a sour tone. "Augers, can we get a scan of the planets? Vox, hail the Incandescent Fury and have them patch through Elena Dassel or anyone else from Umboldt's old crew that can tell us if Umboldt shared any information on the system with them."

Glancing sideways at Macharius, she adds: "Lord Commander, we came here to pick up an engine. Rescuing these benighted souls for the Emperor is a mighty righteous thing to be doing, but you're going to need to make a decision on how long we can spend doing that. We haven't even reached the right wreck yet, and we haven't a clue as to how long we have to salvage what we came for before this place starts getting to us as well."

[PotatoGolem]

Felidae, Anika, find out what you can about these "Carrion." Are they just pirates and raiders, or something worse. And find out where the rest on the crew are. Hannabel is right. We can't stay here long. If we can get to the crew and rescue them, we shall, but I'm not risking our own fleet to do it.

[Destro_Yersul]

Elena had little useful information; Wrath hadn't liked talking about the processional. He considered it something of a personal failing, apparently. On top of that, there hadn't been any new information in a long time. Everything Elena knew, she had told them, and much of it was out of date. There was nothing regarding the Carrion, obviously, and little beyond speculation regarding the Hollow Men. The Hollow Men had been one of the reasons Wrath had fled, apparently - the survivors confirmed that much.

Floating in the sea of wrecks, the augurs had some trouble penetrating the tangled jumble of metal all around them. The readings kept coming back scrambled, filled with nonsense. Slowly, over time, they built up a better picture of the system. There were three planets here, slowly orbiting the black star, brushing hulks out of the way of their passage or claiming them to add to their own bulk. Blight, the first world, was large, but the readouts were strange. Its gravity was far too weak for such a massive object. The augurs reported it being made of both rock and metal, different amounts at different times. The survivors reported three things about it; It was hollow, a honeycomb of tunnels and wrecked vessels; there was good salvage there, sometimes claimed by them, sometimes by the Hollow Men; it was home to one of their outcast groups. They were somewhere deep within the tunnels, hiding from discovery within an old shipwreck. Another group was somewhere within the vast ocean of wrecks surrounding Blight, though the outcasts didn't know exactly where.

Decay, the second world, was far smaller. Sometimes it showed up on the augurs, and sometimes not. It was a black world, dark and quiet. Darker still was the third world, Oblivion, an enormous planet orbiting close to the star, at the far edge of the band of wrecks, where the hulks trailed away into the star. It was distant, massive, and completely unexplored. Nobody had ever set foot on its surface. Nobody had ever travelled beyond its silent vigil to approach the star. Their destination, the wreck of the Wrath Ascended, was thankfully closer to Decay than it was to Oblivion. A third group of outcasts was near there as well, holed up deep within a large space hulk.

The helmsmen of their two ships, plus Torgan's, plotted a course through the Processional. Stopping to pick up the survivors on Blight would be a short detour, as would sending a team to recover those on the Hulk while Torgan and his ship pulled the Wrath apart. The third group was another matter. If they could be found quickly, then they could be worked into the route, but if they couldn't be located even after repeat augur sweeps, the risk to the Sting in staying long enough to find them would be high. Macharius ordered course set for Blight, the two warships keeping up escort on Torgan's smaller freighter.

[rax]

"I don't like this, Lord Commander. If the Hollow Men live on Decay and the Wrath Ascended is close by, then there's good odds we'll have to fight off more of 'em to get what we came for..." Hannabel mutters.

"Magos Ravia, Lady Vanhal. Since it looks like we're going to be welcoming more new arrivals soon, can I trouble you to set up a quarantine section to hold 'em? Don't want 'em wandering about until we're out of here. Oh, and after they've been fully decontaminated and the astropaths have checked them over for Warp maladies we should issue them some clean clothes and basic necessities. If we're gonna keep 'em, we might as well treat 'em decent."

[Leon]

++Large scale mid to long term restricted accommodation would be better served on the Fury and her Brig++

[Haval]

'That will be for whenever we have the time to move them. Perhaps we keep them here in the shuttle bay in the meantime to make it easier to keep an eye on them.' Anika will send an armsman to the ship's stores with a list of requests. Better to try and be decent until they had a reason not to.

After listening to the talk of the Carrion, she'll speculate to the others once no one else can hear. 'Maybe this place broke them mentally and they're a threat in a way that the insane sometimes are. I can certainly understand that. But how do they manage to stay alive in that state? Especially in a place like this. I wouldn't be surprised if something is making them that way, although there is likely no way of knowing for certain unless we see one close up. Perhaps we could consider taking one prisoner.'