In the Name of the Dark Gods: Low-Down and No-Good

[Miltonian]

Terror in Deep Space!

Prowling along the outer edge of Imperial, the DAEMONETTE'S KISS has carved a swathe of destruction and death through ten worlds. Wherever the foul, chaos-worshipping crew went, doom came swiftly for all who yet remained loyal to the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Yet this rampage did not go unnoticed. After taking and plundering a merchant vessel, the crew soon realized it was property of a Rogue Trader by the name of Lord Bryan Seamus McLafferty, who did not take kindly to the theft of his property and slaughter (or worse) of one of his crews. He soon gathered his fleet, several raiders and a frigate, and attempted to chase them down. Though individually none of his ships would pose a threat, en masse they proved problematic. After repelling two boarding actions and heavily damaging both ships responsible, the KISS broke free of the melee and escaped into the Warp.

Having shaken off its pursuers in the labyrinthine passages of that half-real dream realm, the crew emerges into an uncharted system. There are currently no signs of pursuit, but there are some prisoners taken from among the poor souls who tried to board.

[Genth]

Aboard the Bridge of the Kiss, Zakara seethes with simmering fury, helm off to let her bronze skin shimmer in the strange half-light of the dissapating warp clouds, eyes focused on the augury displays. Her armor is still spattered lightly with blood from the recent boarding actions, and her chainhammer still has a grizzly scrap of flesh swinging from its teeth.

"The Great Ocean has bourne use true, Captain. We should be thankful." she says, glancing back towards the three-legged creature who commands the ship. "We should make some sacrifices, since our... retreat will have displeased the Lord of Blood"

[Celticbear]

Meanwhile, Vercingetorix is letting one of his pages lick the blood off his mace, boredly looking at data messages as he sits on the Captain's chair. When Zakara speaks, he rolls his eyes. Khorne's obsession with Blood and Skulls was not at ALL in accordance with the fasion of the ship as a whole. He crossed one of his outer legs over the other two, and sighed, "Sure, sure, whatever. Take... let's say half of the prisoners and do... whatever it is you Khornates do to please your Lord."

[greenpotato]

Aulet stands in a corner, with no defined role on the bridge he is a passive observer. His armored and helmeted pink form gives nothing away as he remains silent, arms hanging loosely at his sides.

[pfm1995]

With muted groans and sharp squeals of metal scraping on metal, Zain-338/mk.27 squirmed his way through the tangled morass of ducting and non-euclidean maintenance corridors that make up the bowels of the Daemonette's Kiss. All around him pipes of coolant pulsed and writhed like great blood vessels, electricity sparked through the air and, in the far distance, something growled with an impossibly deep voice. Closing his eyes and resting a moment, Zain sighed. Once a junior acolyte of the Irrational Prelature, now the closest thing this damned - in every sense of the word - ship has to an enginseer, it was his responsibility to keep the ship in running fit. After a battle like the one they'd just escaped, his job got significantly harder.

It was two hours of stoop-walking before he reached the malfunctioning power coupling causing gravitic fluctuations all along deck twelve - apparently a squad of the Rogue-Trader's men had breached the hull near here, and the ship had promptly eaten them. Judging by the way that the expected occasional electrical arc had become a near-constant torrent of ionized air, it had indigestion. Zain let out another long suffering sigh, fingers tightening around his staff. The various components making up the Daemonette's Kiss were inhabited by no fewer than thirty-six daemons, not counting the malformed scrap-code entities 'living' in its noosphere and the minor daemons that manifested wherever you weren't looking, and each and every one of them had their own unique quirks and foibles. The three that shared possession of the ship's electrical systems were all prideful, fickle beasts and two of them were quite clever. This one was not. The Corrupting Void, as it had oh-so-pretentiously named itself, was as best he could tell a minor daemon of Nurgle and a frequent offender. Fortunately for him, he and Corrupting had developed something of a rapport over the months.

Hefting his staff, Zain wound up and slammed it into the power conduit as hard as he could. Then he did it again, and again and again until the flow of sparks had diminished into a few desultory burps and the greasy sensation on his augmetics had diminished. This, this right here, was an object lesson in why he needed an assistant - if he'd sent a servitor to do this the augmetics would have rusted right out of its body, assuming the mutants living in the ducting didn't kill and eat it first. Corrupting didn't dare try the same with them though, nor would it with someone actively under their protection. Setting down his staff, he broke out his tools and got to work.

A few minutes of energy siphoning, cable-splicing, and ward-reinforcement later, Zein was finished and moving on to the next task in his never-ending to-do list - apparently, one of the cafeteria dispensaries was clogged. He sighed, again. He'd need his plasma gun for this one.

[Miltonian]

Meanwhile, casualty reports are flooding in from around the ship. Most of them are, all things considered, minor. A crew member or two got eaten by the daemon living under their bed, but that only happened because they believed for so long and with such fervor that it existed that, when the ship entered the Warp, it actually did. What passes for a head medicae around here reports that those who didn't die or spontaneously turn into puddles of sentient flesh with twelve eyes and no bones can be 'salvaged' in 'the usual way'. They should re-enter service within a week, made whole but greatly altered.

Soon, detailed reports of the system itself will arrive. But initial scans show a single star with five-planets orbiting it. Only one is in the habitable zone, with the rest all too far away.

====

Zain works tirelessly, toiling on belowdecks with the dedication and drive that few could ever hope to master, at least when it came to something as tedious as tightening bolts and re-aligning quantum-warpified-dinglehoppers. Really now, the others might say, it's all well and good to show dedication to Khorne, if you must. Lop off a few heads, mutilate the bodies, pile them all up, then donate them to the local Slaanesh cult so they can make modern art of them all. But that was exciting, thrilling, real nail-biting stuff. Of course, people who spoke like that tended to get caught by the Dispenser Daemon and turned into the next day's meal (now with eyeball-spaghetti).

This particular daemon has, for some reason, made its home in the food processor. The food processor. While not the only source of food on the ship, it does feed most of the enlisted crew. Officers have their own mess halls, of course. And, despite what one might expect, it is very happy with its current position. VERY happy.

Fortunately, it is not bound to Nurgle, but rather Tzeentch.

[Genth]

Zakara glances down at the casualty reports and lets off an annoyed growl, tossing the datapad back at the menial with one hand, the other fingering a knife at her side. "Your orders, Vercingetorix. We have an uncharted system here, are we staying or are we leaving again?"

[Celticbear]

Vercingetorix took an extended look at what initial scans of the system they found themselves in were. He was interested in the planet that seemed habitable, and knew that most that were habitable probably were indeed already habited. He answered Zakara, "What say we do a more in depth scan of that planet, see if anything is pinging on the ole auspex. If that planet is habited, we could probably hit them with an old fashioned trade'n'raid."

[pfm1995]

Zein leveled an exhausted gaze at the dispensary. To be honest, he was entirely tempted to just leave the thing - it could hardly make the food any worse, and the Slaaneshi aboard assured him that variety is the spice of life. Still, the dispensary did need to be working...

With one bronze-veined mechadendrite, Zein delicately probes the morass of sludge currently blocking the outflow.

[greenpotato]

Aulet glances at the screens and readouts, he says nothing. Whatever his machinations they remain his.

[Genth]

Zakara barks an order at a nearby menial to begin the auspex of the habitable planet, as she turns and moves towards one of the communication stations. She gives orders for Eight Hundred and Eighty Eight slaves to be gathered within the Temple to Khorne upon the Kiss that she had set up - a simple circular room of brass, braziers and blood. "You would do well to see to your own Patron's needs. While I serve only my Lord of Hatred, I do not blind myself to the others of the Powers. Perform Obeyances to the Power of Chaos, lest you be cursed for taking their gift of safe travel for granted."

[Miltonian]

As the captain commands, so it is done. The Auspex reaches out and scans the system, slowly uncovering more and more information. The single planet is, indeed, inhabited, though there appear to be several extensive mining operations on some of the other worlds and clusters of asteroids. Their ships, however, are small, too small for the Auspex to pick up much detail from this range.

The menial that Zakara snapped at almost voids his bowels. "Y-yes ma'am!" he says and scurries off before she can demand more of him. It shall be done as she ordered. And, by the time she arrives, the prisoners are assembled, bound, chained, and otherwise awaiting their doom. They are the defeated, and such is their place.

A cultist in long, bloody robes approaches her, the top of his face hidden by a low hood, but his shark-toothed grin is all-too-visible. "My lady," he says in guttural tones, "We were just waiting for you."

====

Zein pokes it and...it moves. An eye opens in the middle of it, glowering at him with a malevolent gaze. It says nothing, but it is filled with hatred and scorn for all that lives. Not only lives, but has arms. And legs. Heck, that can even move.

[Genth]

The Priestess of Khorne makes her way down to the shrine, turning her head to the priest as he greets her and replying with a snarl of contempt. Such creatures were nessecary to keep the lore of the Blood God, but their flesh tended to be weak and pathetic. "Bloodkeeper. Is everything prepared for a Sacrifice?"

[pfm1995]

A few more desultory pokes left Zain with little more information than when he started. He hummed to himself - banishing it was possible, but not by himself and the sorcerers tended to look down on such menial tasks. Hm, then again, he didn't really need it gone, did he, he just needed the machine working again. If the food was filled with daemonic gibblets or wriggled around a little more than before, who cared? Reaching into a pouch at his back, he pulled out a flask that filled the air with a sickly-sweet smell when opened. Unholy oils, secreted from the ship's warp drives when under strain and purified in an alembic of his own warp-tainted design, flowed down into the demon-clogged intake and on one of his mechadendrites he lit a hand-welder. Unholy oil was also oil, and so very flammable.

Multicolored flames, beautiful in their twisting infinities, rose before him - a prayer, of a sort. Destruction and creation all in one, a transfiguration - oil to smoke, warp-flesh to flame and hopefully a non-working dispensary into a working one.

[greenpotato]

"Do you have orders captain?" Aulet hisses in his soft voice as he lazily browses the scans.