The Flower and the Flame [Actual Play Thread]

[The_Vomacht]

((Hey Guys! Here is the intro to the game. I think I'll make a thread for Characters and a thread for NPC references too later. Double Parenthesis indicates OOC talk, as I think you both already know. Feel free to respond any time, I'm still getting this one together.))

The Calixis Sector. Six Years after the Battle of Mecha.

Having weathered the storm of the Chaos Lord Sargon's invasion and begun the slow, agonizing process of rebuilding, the peoples of the Calixis Sector were looking forward to a new age of peace. Their hopes were dashed with the arrival of Komus, the Tyrant Star, a mysterious astral phenomena of unknown origin, seen as a herald of madness and destruction. Already several worlds around the fringes of the sector have gone silent. What few desperate messages have escaped from those worlds are garbled and insane, telling of mass suicides, inexplicable weather patterns, and the depredations of creatures too horrific to contemplate.

After saving the annual broadcast of the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension Folley (a delightful holo-program in which a young Battle Sister learns the true meaning of the Emperor's Ascension) on the planet of Ganf Magna from the depredations of the sinister Eldar, Inquisitor Zuriel has been contacted by an old acquaintance with an urgent mission. Having requisitioned Quintos as a traveling companion, the two booked passage on the Freight Ship Joyous Shepard, en route to the planet Iocanthos...



It has been two months that the two of you have been travelling aboard the Shepard, posing, together with a small staff of loyal agents, as a group of humble pilgrims. Finally, you receive a secret Inquisitorial signal, telling you to meet in one of the aft cabins in the lowest decks. The pair of you make your way down, dodging surly crewmen, lobotomized servitor drones, and the thousand-strong herd of Grox-cattle that has been stinking up several of the holds.

As is ever the case in one of the massive ships of the Imperium, the lower decks are ill-lit and badly maintained. Coolant mist pools about your feet from leaking valves, dim green warning runes embedded on the walls inform you that the radiation level is just below safety standards, and bulkhead doors all have to be manually pushed open, lacking that satisfying hiss of an automated door.

Hunched behind a glowing holo-lith table is the rather repulsive form of Inquisitor Globus Vaarak. His flesh is puckered and red, his stomach a vast and bloated expanse barely contained by the ribbed body-glove he wears. His left arm and the whole of his body below the waist have been replaced with heavy-duty mechanical augmetics, a relic of a severe injury he took in the line of duty decades ago. Jutting above his shoulders is an ostentatious mini-shrine, a good-luck totem from his youth that also houses the various complex medical systems that keep him alive. Tubes of brightly colored fluid emerge from the shrine and puncture his flesh at various points, giving the odd impression that the machinery is a kind of obscene spider half-way done with consuming the crippled Inquisitor.

Globus regards you with what amounts to a wry smile on his ruined face. You recall that despite his grotesque appearance, Inquisitor Globus Vaarak is a man of honor who stood by your old master Cortez at his trial.

"Greetings, Zuriel. It has been some time since Cortez's trial, hasn't it? And I see you brought your esteemed Mechanicus Assassin. Well, we had best get down to business. Things are looking very, very dire, and I think it's only someone with your skills that can help us now."

[The_Vomacht]

"I will be brief," Inquisitor Vaarak says once you've taken your seats at the holo-lith table.
"The Tyrant Star has appeared near Scintilla. With the capital world of our sector under threat, I and my fellows in the Tyrantine Cabal have stepped up our efforts to stop the damned thing.
Unfortunately... most of us still have no idea what the Tyrant star is."

As Vaarak speaks, he depresses several studs in the side of the table. A blue-ish transluscent image of the sector appears, with Scintilla highlighted. Not far, along a stable warp route, is Iocanthos. You note that half a dozen planets and star systems have their names darkened, with LOST CONTACT written beneath them.

"The Cabal was formed to study the Tyrant Star, to understand it and, hopefully to stop it if it proved malignant. We pooled resources from all branches of the Inquisition, be they the Daemon-fighters of the Ordo Malleus, the heretic-hunters of the Ordo Hereticus, or the alien killers of the Ordo Xenos. It was our brothers and sisters in the Ordo Xenos who had the most promising leads on the Tyrant Star, but unfortunately, as of Inquisitor Loxley's purge of the Ordo in this sector, they're all dead or in hiding," Vaarak pauses, and spits out a gobbet of fluid on ground. His breathing apparatus wheezes.

With a swipe of his hand, an image of the sigil of the Ordo Xenos appears, along with the faces of a dozen Inquisitors, each with KIA emblazoned across them. Vaarak stares sadly at the names for a moment. His palsied hand reaches to his face, and dabs faintly at the spittle on his lip.

"Friends of mine..." he mutters. In a moment, he has gathered himself and continues to speak. "Only one person still lives within the Sector who might know what the Tyrant Star is."

Vaarak taps a finger to the face of one of the dead Inquisitors. The face enlarges, and text detailing the Inquisitor and known assosciates appears and begins to scroll downwards. Vaarak taps one name,Erminegard Gale, and a new image appears. A dark haired woman with chalk-white skin, piercing blue eyes and a severe expression appears. "

"Scholar Xenosia Erminegard Gale," Vaarak says. " She knows more about aliens and their artifacts than anyone else in the sector, and she got several data-lumes with details on bizarre astral phenomenon, likely related to the Tyrant Star. My intelligences sources indicate she's hiding on Iocanthos.
That's where you come in Inquisitor. I need you and your assassin to find this woman and extract her from the planet. What she knows could mean the difference between Life and Death for the Sector."

(( She plays Adept Gale, by the way: http://cdn2.denofgeek.us/sites/denofgeekus/files/zap-penny-dreadful-season-1-episode-8-grand-gu-019_0.jpg.))