[b]Vael![/b]

"You are right," the daemon agreed immediately. "To hell with the Warmaster. To hell with [i]diplomacy[/i]. To hell with the Garden. Burn them from orbit. Burn them from the ground. Shatter the stones. Break the walls. Topple the Glass Knight, butcher the Ancient Raven, dam the Crystal Waterfall, break the Chrome Mirror, burn the Consuming Mask. Ten billion rotten souls line these walls, you do not need them, you do not want them. Bring the edifice crashing down and leave only ruin. Such a feat would draw the eye of the Gods, have no doubt."

[b]Leuric![/b]

The Captain has ripped many things out of himself. One of those things was [i]fearlessness[/i]. It is eerie, seeing human fear in the sunken, wasted eyes of an Astartes. Without biochemical regulation, his muscle has sloughed from his giant bones, leaving him sickly and thin; without the ports of his black carapace his armour sits upon him like a dead thing, and without the layered psychological and hypno-conditioning augmentations pain is as real to him as it is to - well, not you. You have a more nuanced relationship with pain. 

But the end result of his self-inflicted lobotomies and amputations is that he cowers like a dog in the face of your ire.

"... brace for maneuvers," the Captain. "Disable void shields, disable spinal lance. Launch all void wings, full power and double shifts on point defense batteries. Target all mines within intercept envelope, prioritize activated nodes. Shrine deck, all ritual resources are to be turned towards the Blood Altar. We approach loudly, 'midst fire and ash."

Alerts start to flash, the patterns beautiful and hypnotic, crimson and blue crystal lights bathing the deck in a strobe with a dancing pattern. The old Imperial alarm sirens have long since been replaced, a roaring thrash of guitar music drives hands shipwide to their positions. A shudder runs through the steel as the Maw rouses itself.

"Marvelously bold, my lord," said Mme. Dizzy. "But I must ask - what are your orders for after we have landed you and your retinue? The ship will be dreadfully exposed, and likely damaged, after carving such a hole, and I would hate to leave you without a way home."

[b]Hagar![/b]

It feels like it might have gone another way. It always does, with Other Blue. You can practically hear the scratching on the inside of her eyes, on the inside of her mind, of the hiss and spit as the fuse tries to light. 

"Most people who walk without knowing where they're going are followers, Hag," she said. "And I don't think you're a follower. So you're either bullshitting me or bullshitting yourself."

The emergency lights came on. The thrum of guitars, the grumbled metallic voices of deck overseers advising immanent contact. The game is forgotten - everyone is racing for void suits and mag boots, clipping belt hooks into safety rails. The corridors fill with the howls of terrified beastmen and mutants and the crashing lock-step of companies of ship armsmen marching down corridors in lockstep. Blind Magi trundle through the dark, surrounded by entourages of lesser creatures that cavort and dance about them, marking walls and pulling levers. A voidship may have a mind and eyes and sense of purpose, but down here this is a mad city in the dark, battening down for the coming of a storm.