40K Dark Heresy: The Recondite War

[White Haven]

Ajax hops down out of the vehicle, his sword already in his hand as his knees flex with the impact. He frowns slightly, then furrows his brow and once again opens his inner eye to the flow of time about him, straining for any hint of danger. He hurries forward after Mithras, eyes flicking back and forth for any sign t hat their approach was expected.

[Manifesting precog, will be maintaining it as long as possible]

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli jumps out with his shotgun ready for action.

[Jaevric]

Darien rushes forwards, shotgun at the ready as he looks for any sign of resistance, and yells "Arbitrators! Everyone on your knees, hands on your heads! In the name of the Emperor!"

[Zablorg]

Crom drew his pistol from his side, making his coat swish dramatically in a manner he would later describe as "awesome". He propped his gun directly in front of him, his other hand on the bottom of the handle, pointing it menacingly.

"I'd what he says, people. Our original plan was to kill you all, so this here is being generous."

[Block]

With an angry look on his face Scar leaps from the back of the vehicle, chainsword drawn and active. "Where is Kinge?" he shouts at the nearest patron.

[NecronLord]

There was a clattering of trays falling and glasses smashing as the startled staff reacted to the arbitrator’s sudden appearance. Decadant nobles they might be, but they were not fools; alone the enforcers were something to be feared, so it could only be more serious when they brought military backup. Almost as one, they fell to their knees, and obeyed.

Meanwhile, for Ajax, several things happened. As he drew back the curtain of time, it was as though he briefly became more than human, time, and space, were for an instant, as nothing, impaled and pinned by a lance of desperate psychic agony from below, in the building’s basement, the immaterial-screams of a fellow psyker in more pronounced and terrible agony than any he had ever come into contact with, even on the black ship. And time, too, was briefly parted, glimpses of the future; though this was less clear. Images, of things yet to come, literal, or metaphorical, first he saw a table of knives. Then, an iron, gothic doorway, capped by a melting gargoyle, the wooden door within at once burning and breaking under an axe. Then he saw, bodies, heretics’ bodies, it seemed, dead, against the doorway by the pulpit, and in a stairway leading down from behind it. Then, a young man in a wig of golden hair, interlaced with shining electoo stands, upon his knees, and finally, Crom, standing behind an enforcer, a look of agonised distress on his face as he placed his pistol to the back of the unaware enforcer’s neck, and fired, the bullet ripping through, from the front of the neck, the man falling first swaying back, and then crumpling down into a heap, his eyes terrified. As before, this seemed only to take a fraction of a second, and those around him had barely moved after the vision.

A startled patron looked up at Scar, and shivered, “Ardus Kinge? I think he might be here… upstairs, maybe?” he said, pointing behind the bar.

[White Haven]

Time may not have passed during the ice-pain shock of pan-reality pouring into Ajax's brain, but his reactions after the fact certainly confirm to those around him that something happened. Unprepared for the livid sensations being fed to him, he stumbles and goes to one knee abruptly, the monoedged rapier in his hand scoring a furrow in the floor. Finally, he looks up, teeth clenching together as he struggles to draw meaning from the jumble. "Downstairs!" he blurts out, only to cut himself off as he remembers the group's cover. Mind racing for something to patch up the hole, he continues with, "Witchery...I can feel it." To say more with the Regulator and his men about...that would be Bad. What remains to be seen is whether silence will, in the end, prove worse.

[Block]

Hearing Ajax's assessment and the patron's answer, a scowl came across the already harsh looking features of Scar's face.

"Mithras, Ajax, Mercurius, Darien, we're heading for the basement. Crom, Eli, take the Regulator and her men, search the up the stairs, leave a pair of them here to cover this rabble," in a louder voice he said, "this building is under quarentine by the Witch Hunters of the Ecclisiarchy, ANY attempt at flight or resistance will result in the damnation of your eternal souls."

Signaling to his companions, Scar moved to the basement steps, and kicked the door open, tossing the remaining stun grenade down.

[Zablorg]

"Got it. Come, along men."

He beckoned the Regulator and her men from outside to come join him.

"And once again, patrons, I would do what he says. There is a reason I wear this longcoat, you know."

He gave a shudder, glanced at Scar much the way a frightened grox would to its abusive master, quickly looked away, and stroked the right of his waist tenderly.

"Anyway. Eli, you take the lead. the rest of you, just follow your proceedure."

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli lead the pack with his shotgun, it wasn't a modern pump action affair from Gunmetal, it was an older affair smoothbore barrels chopped, with a pistol grip, holding only two shells at a time. Still it could be a most devestating weapon up close or at midrange...

[Balrog]

Mithras fell in behind Eli, lasgun at the ready. He subvocalized into the comm bead, directing it at Ajax, "What does your mind-magic tell you?"

[White Haven]

Startled by the voice from the bead in his ear, Ajax quickly adapts as he realizes there's a way to hide what he's seen from the Regulator and his band. He replies through the throat-mic, too quietly to be detected beyond it, "A psyker's being tortured downstairs...or at least is in...amazing amounts of pain. And...bodies, although I'm not sure what that means. Fire. Axes. It was...distressingly cryptic." As he fills the team in on the private comm channel he devoutly hopes Mercurius has properly secreted int he commbeads, the psyker follows Eli towards the door to the staircase, adding his own affirmation to the direction the point was already taking.

[NecronLord]

The regulator and a one of her men, (the two from the vehicles covering the front of the establishment with the vehicle-mounted stubbers) detached from the squad that’d secured the rear, followed Eli and Crom up the stairs, behind the bar, where a heavy door looked like it was intended to separate sounds from below from those upstairs. The sight in the room beyond was a startling one. One man, near the windows, was tied into a chair, gagged, but he wasn’t screaming around it anyway, simply drooling and staring into the middle distance. Next to him, on a table, were several mixing tins of what appeared to be a brown fluid, and standing nearby, as though waiting, were two men, watching their prisoner, both of them equipped with auto-pistols of two different local designs. They turned…


Meanwhile, downstairs, as Scar tossed the door behind the pulpit open, flinging a grenade down the stairs, a trio of men, dressed in costumes like those of the patrons, but of a somewhat lower order, not quite as well made, and carrying autoguns, could be seen making their way up the stairs; curiously, despite the object sailing past their ears, they neither flinched, nor reacted, for a moment... There was a deafeningly loud explosion, and a flash of light from the doorway, screams from some of the nearby civillians, and then after that, the sound of footfalls, advancing upward slowly and heavily.

[And it’s onto initiative. The two guards upstairs are surprised. The three downstairs aren’t, but aren’t getting their actions yet. Map of the upstairs posted…]

[Zablorg]

Crom shot a hail of bullets at the guard farthest away from the psyched out avacado.

[Block]

With a grin Scar set a frag grenade for a two second delay, thumbed the detonator, and rolled it down the stairs. He quickly slammed the door behind him and sang out "Three on the way up, be ready."

[White Haven]

"Always with the explosives, givin me a headache..." Ajax grumbles to himself, hurrying over to the wall near the suddenly-shut door and flattening against the side where the opening door would shield him from the notice of someone passing through it. He grits his teeth, preparing for the BANG of the frag grenade, and equally preparing to gut the first sonofabitch to charge past his hiding spot out of the stairwell.

[Jaevric]

Darien glances around and then drops one of the tables on its side, scattering drinks before rolling it to provide a minimum of cover between him and anyone coming up the stairs.

Dropping into a crouch behind the table, he rests his shotgun across the top, pointing directly at the door and ready to blast the first convenient target.

[Lancer]

Intoning an infrasonic prayer to the Machine God, Mercurius took the opportunity to line up a perfect shot at the entrance, at what was practically point-blank range for such a weapon. Anyone standing in the doorway when it opened would find themselves subject to a burst of carefully aimed lasbolts.

[NecronLord]

Upstairs, Crom fired a burst of gunfire that chewed through a table and a plush sofa, and punctured a bedroom door, causing screaming to emit from behind it, but didn’t do much else, as Regulator Krine and the enforcer with her opened fire at the same man, who seemed exceptionally lucky, bullets thudding into the room around him, the wide calibre bullet from Krine’s pistol punching a fist sized depression in the plaster wall behind the guard. Downstairs, Scar tossed a grenade down the stairs, but his aim was off somewhat, the weapon bouncing from the ceiling and falling short on one of the first steps. Again, the men in the stairwell didn’t seem to react, and a moment later, there was the explosion, tearing the heavy door from its hinges, burning and blasting it apart into blazing splinters, filled with holes where shrapnel had cut through it. And then there was nothing, for a moment. One man was not only dead, but broken into pieces, another twitching on the ground, and a third, apparently shielded by the two men before him, struggled, still blinded by the flash grenade, and pinned at the bottom of the stairs by a severely wounded compatriot.

[Free actions...]

[White Haven]

On one hand, the door Ajax had been planning to use as cover has been turned into kindling. On that same hand, that was FUCKING loud, and he's going to have a headache for hours, easily. On the other hand, the groans and screams of pain from the staircase are a counteravailing concern. Still, he gives the grenadier a dirty glare before turning his attention back to the wrecked doorway in preparation for the coming charge downstairs. A charge t hat he firmly resolves to NOT take point on if he can avoid it.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli cursed the luck of the guard who had thus far avoided their ritious fury he remembered that even those damn fast Eldar couldn't avoid the spread of a shotgun blast, and the soft metal pellets were not likely to over penetrate and cause the whole boarding crew to be sucking void, unless the rustification was too advanced, or worse yet it was one of those cursed Xenos ships.

[Balrog]

Mithras considered throwing his last grenade into the stairwell, but from what he heard coming from downstairs it seemed it wouldn't be needed. "Advance slowly, even on the brink of death the heretic is devious." He kept his lasgun ready to cover the pointman.

[Jaevric]

Feeling more than slightly irritated at having wasted his time with the makeshift cover, Darien gets back on his feet and starts towards the door at a jog, shotgun raised.

Deciding that neither of the two bladesmen was going to go charging down the stairs and not wanting to let the enemy recover from the grenade blasts, he starts to angle the shotgun downwards as he approaches the stairs, planning to blow the top of the first bastard in line's head off.

[NecronLord]

Eli’s shotgun hit one flinching guard square in the chest, and he dropped to the floor, instantly, quite dead.

[And… New initiative]

Regulator Krine shot again, this time, winging the other heretic, who returned fire, the single pistol shot impacting her chest armour, harmlessly.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the charred and smoking – in places, actually burning – stairs to the basement, two still-living, blinded, enemies lay entangled with one another.

[Zablorg]

Roaring with a primal fury, Crom charged at the remaining guard with the knife that he had previously drawn in bitter loathing of his unfaithful guns (that's a free action, right?)