40K/Inquisitor RPG. The Line of Damnation.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-17 03:13pm

Varian stepped back from the mighty daemon and extended his fist. Multicoloured warp lightning leapt out and smashed into the daemon with ravening fury. Varian stepped back and unleashed another punishing volley As he did so, Jolan Gix finished the first bannishing incantation.

It wasn't enough. The daemon was still too strong. Gix raised his force rod. A beam of blue-white flame smashed into the daemon's chest. Gix held the beam as he poured more and more power into utterly destroying the daemon's physical body. There was more than one way to send it back to the warp.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-18 04:16am

"Demo team status." Pater hissed into his vox. "Or are they all taking a tea break?"

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-19 08:42am

"In position now sir, ten seconds," was the reply.

The demon continued to be held on the defensive, its tenuous links to the material universe being assailed even as its semiinsubstantial form was assaulted.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-19 09:15am

Gix triggered his vox. "Back!" he ordered. I'm sorry Nathan, he whispered in his mind. I can't save you. He sent out a wave of telekinetic force to knock the daemon back so everyone else would have a chance to escape. "Blow it!"

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-19 02:45pm

Pater retreated to the doorway, Force Staff held over his head, glowing a deep blue as Pater kinetically shielded himself. At the same time he snapped the mental equivalent of a bear trap into the raw regions of the Daemon's psyche that he'd uncovered so far.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-20 04:39am

The Demon looked up.

Then everything turned to grey as tonnes upon tonnes of pulverised ceiling came down along with rocks the size of modest houses, raining through the shattered cathedral roof as though half the hive had been knocked onto it. While they might not have been the fastest demolition team in the galaxy, they certainly got results when they finally demolished.

Taran Vonrilyental coughed hoarsely as he swallowed the clogging, burning dust. "The ships sould be in position again. Call down a lance strike," he stammered. He was, by the standards of the Inquisition, an optimist. That didn't make him a fool. Huge portions of the walls of the cathedral fell inwards, shaking the survivors even more...

And still the pressure on the mind went on, but much, much weaker now, as it if were more distant.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-20 04:53am

"Severa!" Gix yelled into his vox. "Targetting data incoming! Full lance strike !"

"Everyone out!" Gix began to run.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-20 05:33am

"I thought you'd never ask." Pater ran towards the exit.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-22 01:58pm

It takes a very special type of person to endure the spectacle of such massive destruction without a prayer jerking reflexively from the lips. To survive near it is epicentre is even harder, but some survived it. The demon, weakened, crippled but alive, let loose a terrible scream of primal anger and rage. Rock melted and flowed like water in the cathedral, some boiling off into an infernal glowing cloud of vaporised matter, and an earthquake shook the hive to its very foundations deep below.

Vast crevices appeared and hurricane force winds blasted out of the depths as the hive began to implode under the fury of the archeotech-upgraded lances. In the burning, unbearably bright, for those who lacked appropriate eye protection at any rate, sea of liquid rock, the demonic abomination writhed, its features at last becoming solid and tangible.

For a horrible instant, it seemed as if the Demon Prince could, would, somehow endure the inferno in which it found itself. But it was too little, too late.

Wounds left on its body poured with black blood and a foul smoke erupted as even its unnatural and unholy flesh burnt in the heat of a star. With a tremendously loud thunderclap, the horror folded up and inwards, collapsing to a point and disappearing, taking a torrent of liquid rock with it, and distorting the winds in the ruin of the religious district of the hive.

Warped and twisted angels and gargoyles fell into the river of molten rock, some falling to the point where the demon had been banished and seeming through some foulness to become animated and twist in parody of horror as they were torn through the passageway to the abyss of horrors beyond.

They weren’t the only ones. The slowest of the survivors, and also the most senior, Vonrilyental found himself pulled off his feet by the wind. It was not, mercifully, to the same horrific fate that he flew. Instead the venerable inquisitor fell through the surface of the river of fire and was simply gone, disappearing into the blazing whirlpool of rock where the starship’s lance had pierced into the lowest levels of the hive city without even a scream.

The barrage ended as quickly as it had begun, but its effects didn’t. The wind subsided as the now inevitable collapse of the city slowed to a crawl, and the line of plasma reaching as far as could be seen into the sky marking out where the lance had struck slowly began to be blown apart by the winds. The melted rock flowed downwards and away, but the inferno of heat remained to mark the passing of both.

And the end of its effects in finally banishing the enemy could never truly be told by any mortal mind.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-22 03:47pm

Pater skidded to a halt, wheezing from a combination of prolonged exertion, cement dust and lung damage from his brief infection. "Status?" He gasped.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-22 03:54pm

"Alive..." Lena gasped, "and it's dead. Seems like a good status to me..."

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-22 04:01pm

"That is heartening," Pater leaned heavily on his staff, "But I was referring to the global situation. Lord Vonrilyental?" He looked around. "Oh, Throne. Don't tell me..."

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-22 09:44pm

"We had already killed their warlord an wrecked the core of their armies," Gix replied. Dust sloughed off the inquisitor as a telekinetic wind swirled around him. "I do not think this will hurt our cause. But this strange daemon is worrysome. Where is Lord Vonrilyental?"

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-23 03:06am

Pater reached out with his mind. He knew it to be true. "He's dead, Jolan."

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-23 05:16pm

"I," Lena paused, "could have sworn he was right behind me..." She sighed, "I guess it was too much to expect for everyone to escape that thing alive..."

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-23 07:00pm

Pater grimaced. Of course they'd lose the two most knowledgable and important members of their group. There were few Inquisitors who lived to be as powerful and wise as Vonrilyental. And Talstrem, he was priceless.

"We can remember our lost later." Pater ground out with obvious difficulty. "For now, we need to assess the situation. Is it too much to hope that our actions," He gestured widely to the sizzling crater that had been the Daemon's birthplace, "Have damaged our opponent's morale?"

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-24 05:13am

"Our assault was already rolling them up all over the planet," Jolan added saddly. "This wont' help them. But we have a number of mysteries before us and not enough answers. What was this daemon? What did Vonrilyental know? Why did the powers of chaos hope to accomplish in this sector? It seemed like they were running half a dozen different campaigns to distract us from their true aims." The inquisitor shook his head. "We have victories, but more questions than answers."

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-24 05:19am

"I was going on the assumption that they wanted the Archaeotech," Pater mused, "But it's never that simple, is it?"

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-24 05:22am

"When did they discover the archaeotech Pater? What connection does this strange daemon have? Why a subsector wide uprising if they after after one site on one planet. Cults don't just spontaneously generate. They take time to grow. The Black Legion didn't just decide to show up. What happened here could have been a coincidence, but it is unsafe to assume that all hell broke loose coincidently. It is more likely that this was part of a larger campaign, whatever that might be."

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-24 05:30am

Pater nodded slowly, then winced and kept his head very still. "We need to look into this further." He said redundantly. "I believe the nearest extraction point is 3.5 kilometres north."

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-24 12:51pm

Lena nodded, and set off at a brisk pace. If there was to be time to reflect on this mystery, she'd be glad to start reflecting when they were off the rock.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-24 04:18pm

Gix trudged after her, ideas swimming through his brain. It was likely, although maddening, that he would only get answers to some of his questions. How much with the unaswered ones cost the Imperium? Only time would tell.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-25 05:39am

Gix touched his vox. "Sev, we won. At cost, as usual. Send down a boat to take us home." Jolan rubbed his face. The chemical stew he had been pushing into his body was taking its toll.

"Jolan, are-"

"I'll be find. Just tired. I'll see you soon." He looked over at the commodore. Severa's troubles with the navy were a sector away and she now had contacts here. Contacts who could become patrons in the clannish world of Navy. "We have some things to talk about." He almost said I love you. It was almost true. He did care and what they had might become love if given a chance. But she did deserve a chance at fulfilling her dream.

Jolan smiled wryly. An Inquisitor who destroyed lives based on probabilities and potentials had no business complaining that chances of happiness were slipping through his fingers. He would discuss the options with her, on the off chance she hadn't figure them out anyway. Then she would make her choice. For inquisitors, about some matters there was no choice.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-25 05:50am

On their way to the exfil point they passed a concourse filled to bursting with rotting corpses. A baritone wuffle caught their attention, and Mork bounded from atop a building, Pater's pet Vindicare not far behind. Mork noticed that Pater was carrying the hammer.

"He died well, Mork."

Subdued, they carried on.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2005-07-25 11:27am

It wasn't difficult to get several landing craft into position. Indeed, a large number of light craft hovered around the hive, evacuating the lesser servants of the Emperor and bombing those areas where the defeated remnants of the enemy tried to stage breakouts from the imploding hive.