Bugman

Mercenaries! - A tongue in cheek fantasy roleplay where things often go wrong 18+ language, violence

Somewhat interested, likely play a commoner, a weaselly jack of all trades focused on pure luck as you say

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

<Snipped quote by Bugman>

I quite like the origin and I think the idea of a primarch being augmented to the point it's not obvious that they are even a primarch has some interesting plot points to raise.

The transformation psychic is just a bit much for me, that's a very high end form of psychic power and I'm doubtful given the Emperor's push for the primarch's to be 'human but better' he would willingly design something so non-human as to be entirely fluid in form.

Personally I think it would be more interesting if the second half of the twin was scattered further away, like with Omegon, rather than be a known twin at the start, but that's a preference rather than something preventing me from accepting.

@Ezekiel

Thanks for the review.

When it comes to the fluidity of the form, is the problem absolute? I.e., if it was reduced to simply them being able to remold their face and their skin to be ports, sockets, etc. to interface with technology? If perhaps it was only their skin that was fluid like mercury, rather than them in entirety. If that isn't feasible either they can simply be reworked to just stick the machinery into their meat like normal techpriests.

As for their separation, I'd be happy to rework that to make it fit into the broader narrative too. If the second one also fell on a forgeworld that contacted Mars, but a warp storm would separate them from reuniting? I'm suggesting this mostly because I want their separation to be somewhat of a plot point for them: they would tragically be aware they have a missing half that completes them somewhere in the stars, so close but never quite within reach, which would be made all the more sad when (at least, I would like) one of them stays loyal, whilst another falls to chaos when the heresy does happen.

Aside from the Primarchs, is the sheet for the Legion and the Fabricator fine?

Firefly - Second 'Verse

Hey Bugman, I think both your responsiveness and Elias' responses have been great.

We interact in a few different ways in FF2V:

1. Individual posts.
2. "Back and forth" posting between writers.
3. JP (joint post) collaborative posts involving groups, or in this case, the entire crew and newcomers.
4. Something we haven't explored much is live IC chat, but as this crew develops Wolf and I are both keen to have some live sessions around the galley table.

Our writers all seem to enjoy the JP/collaborative post style, as it gives opportunities to engage in a large group post, regardless of your time zone. It also suits the episodic nature of the game, allowing us to create the scene and write our way through its' conclusion.

We hope you're having a good time, and are all looking forward to much more from Elias. Don't forget to engage us all through Google Chat (I think Wolf sent you an invite?)

sail

@sail3695

Yeah, the joint posts just progress differently to what I have done prior. Regardless, I don't see an invitation to the google chat in my email or the chat in my list of google chats

Warhammer 40,000: Blood & Beauty

Alarika Hreiff

AGE
29

GENDER
Female

RANK & ROLE
Arbites Chaplain

HOMEWORLD
She doesn't know, truth be told, where she was born. But she spent her adolescence and youth in the Schola Progenium on an orbital facility spinning around a quaint gas giant called Pericles III.

PERSONALITY
Alarika is a person of immense faith that lead her to be selected for work in the Ministorum whilst she was still within the Schola Progenium. She is always certain in the rightness of the Imperial cause, in the wisdom of the God Emperor, of his vision and of its future. But, she was born with a questioning nature, which while never applying to matters of the faith, applied to others and herself. Even when meeting or surpassing demanded standards, she is always questioning herself and striving to exorcise failings imagined and real alike. It is for this reason that she has somewhat of a mixed reputation among the Arbites that are her charge. Those that might appreciate the socratic method of sorts she applies to any spiritual and mental problems they might have in resolving their issues will speak of her as the greatest spiritual councillor they could have asked for. Yet those that might be too reclusive or untrusting for her constant prodding and inquests when speaking to them will oft be driven to speak poorly of her.

BACKGROUND
Though scrubbed from any record, Hreiff's parents were faithful servants to an Inquisitor until possession forced their termination. Not seeing possession as treachery for the will of the poor henchmen was irrelevant, the Inquisitor rewarded their service with the removal of their damnation and a secure position for their sole offspring.

Placed in a quiet little facility of the Schola Progenium, Alarika was given a rather typical experience. Different Drill Abbotts would temper each other's kindness and sternness respectively to similarly temper the pupils. After all had mastered the foundational knowledge and physical ability, Alarika found herself slowly losing friends and indeed people she considered siblings in the schola as one by one they were picked off for service in the various offices that were groomed for them from Administratum Clerks to Inquisitors to Tempestus Scions.

Yet as the herd ever thinned, she found herself quite fearful for the future seeing herself not having been selected for any career even as she turned into an adult. She was happy to take as many punches in the training cages as fellow orphans much larger than her, yet in the end always spilled many more confessions of suffered pain. She knew the arithmetic that might be demanded of a clerical role, but ultimately cared not for it in a manner that was a liability for such. Great was her faith, and indeed she was noted for almost ceaselessly asking questions oft to the annoyance of Drill Abbotts. This intersection of physical and mental aptitude almost marked her for an Inquisitorial role in her own right, but there was one thing that prevented such: doubt. Constant queries whether she had failed or not, uncertainty about her and her "siblings'" course ultimately crossed her out of a position in the Inquisition. It was thus that an unceremonious but still respectable one was seen to be a good fit: a Chaplain of the Arbites. Taking advantage of all her skills and to some degree weaponizing what many saw as failings made all including Hreiff herself agree this would be a good life for the woman.

Her first posting to a pleasure world was very, very brief. Not yet used to the etiquettes and other facts of life outside of the orphanage she had spent her life in, she ran her mouth far too much in a tale that had happened trillions of times in the Imperium and human civilization before it: annoyed superiors as a method of punishment transferred her to a backwater as a sort of banishment and exile.

Arriving on Arterium, Alarika truth be told had only inklings about why she was brought to the world, and perhaps for the better as she did not see the beautiful world of scarlet hues to be a punishment of any sort. Still she had gathered enough from her prior posting to exorcise a little more tact among fellow Arbites and thus - though still somewhat of an alien even among the many fellow offworlder Arbites - she has slowly started to call Arterium home.

EQUIPMENT
Ministorum jumpsuit (a modified take upon Priestly robes that could be sealed for the void), eviscerator, autogun, rosarius, psalter, dataslate.

MISCELLANEOUS
Injuries sustained largely in infancy have left her with non-negligible cybernetics. A large part of her vocal chords have been rendered inoperable and thus her speech is a strange assembly of natural and mechanical noises. Her right eye is synthetic as well. The pixellation and microsecond delay of the vision it feeds is a nuisance, but it can work as a light too.

Also looking through pinterest for "scarred woman" really didnt turn up a lot of good results :/

Firefly - Second 'Verse

Apologies on responsiveness the collaboration here is done a smidge differently to what I am accustomed to

Warhammer 40,000: Blood & Beauty

I'll have something out tmrw

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

The Hordes of Enlightenment

Legion Sheet
Legion Name: The Hordes of Enlightenment (The Swords of Truth, for the brief period prior to discovery of their Primarch)

Associated Primarch: The Twins Amunal and Slynn

Concept: The Horde or the Enlightened (the chosen colloquialism depending on one’s personal standing with the Legion) are a particularly technologically advanced Legion owing to their very direct and personal relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Following the discovery of the Primarchs, every new inductee into the Legion is a fully conforming member of the Cult Mechanicus. In a very immediate and kinetic sense this ensures they have weapons and equipment otherwise alien to the Astartes such as transuranic and galvanic rifles, or complements of Kastellans and similar robots to wield. Every Space Marine is as much machine as flesh, each one augmenting their own cybernetics as a sort of never ending project. The Legion has neither Techmarines nor Chaplains in the traditional sense, for with every member being formally a Tech-Priest ensures that all can minister to machinery and that officers further within the Cult can minister to the mental and spiritual wellbeing of their underlings.

The Legion has non-negligible institutional friction with other segments of the Imperium, including some other Legions that may not appreciate the cybernetic religion and all that implies. When new worlds are taken by the Legion, more often than not they are turned to the administration of the Mechanicum rather than the greater Imperium, a fact oft looked down upon.

Throughout the prosecution of the campaigns, they will wage war in a fashion not dissimilar to the rest of the Mechanicus. A great fleet of servo-skulls will be used for reconnaissance and tracking of targets, whilst other machinery like artillery and vehicles do most of the destructive work rather than any glamorous infantry combat Astartes are typically associated with. The rare cases that the Legion makes infantry maneuvers are typically the ones that demand stealth, and usually just mere prelude to their more typical style of warfare. Perhaps the most gruesome part of their warfare, is that when fighting human opponents they will make careful sure to take great masses of prisoners such that they may be servitorized. While they see this as an opportunity for these people to repent against the Imperium of Man, foes and allies alike are oft unsettled by this.

The attitude to Serfs of the Legion are also very, very different to that of most other Astartes. The Serfs of the Legion are treated almost as experiments, toys, whimsies to play with. Each Astartes will work upon the Serfs given to them, tuning their precise augments and cybernetics to what they would need from them. Further, they tend to be far more pro-active in the utilization of these serfs in campaigns, often including them as outright complements to their armed efforts in the event that Mechanicum or Imperial Army support is unavailable. Thus a Hordesman of Enlightenment might be accompanied by their own augmented humans to do anything from dig an emplacement they would defend to covering their advance with an AA missile launcher. This attitude is not extended just to the underlings of the Legion, however. Every Marine is instilled with values of transhumanism, and thus they will keep working upon themselves until there is naught left of flesh save a brain and a few supporting organs. Indeed, even the Apothecaries and Librarians gradually take this into consideration as they work upon the human and Astartes biologies alike. Though this is done far more discretely, the Serfs of the Legion's Apothecarion and Librarius are oft beasts of almost alien flesh and great forests of cabling from the skull respectively. Though more careful in applying these advances to themselves, one can at times see them take the lessons they learn experimenting upon humanity upon themselves.

The Geneseed of the Legion is relatively stable, though at some cost: namely that it suppresses most mutations. It is for that reason that the Legion has perhaps the smallest Librarius of all the Astartes for most psykers lose the whole of their psychic powers wholesale upon the implantation of the progenoid gland. It is for that reason they particularly treasure their Librarians, rarely fielding them in battle and always accompanying them with a bodyguard of serfs. Yet, though true psykers are a rarity in the Legion, the majority of its children benefit from the quasi-psychic powers that their Primarchs have. Its members have acutely analytical minds with natural technical skills, and bear some degree of The Voice that somewhat smooths over otherwise ineptitude skill of diplomacy of the Legionnaires. More often the voice is exhibited as "machine-whispering", providing an easier time in their works with technology greater than mere machine-litanies of other Tech-Priests. Yet, the most gifted of the Twins' genechildren inherit their parents' traits to the point that they too are of a liquid metal form. Considered to be exceptionally blessed grandchildren of the Emperor, they usually are the public faces of the Legion speaking to outsiders after molding their appearance to whatever they believe their counterparts will like.

The Legion has quite a wide fleet, and an arsenal along with stockpile of supplies that has them be not particularly cautious with their logistics knowing the great support they have from the Mechanicus in supplies.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

The Twins

Primarch Character
Name: Amunal and Slynn, the silver twins

Legion: The Hordes of Enlightenment

Homeworld: Mars

Psyker Grade: Rho

Skills/Abilities:

-The Voice: Each twin and the most prodigious of their children can sway the world with their speech. While in the most base form, this simply makes it nigh impossible for mortals to disagree with them or find flaw in their words, even if the effect is lessened with increasing degrees of transhumanism. But as the twins grow to adulthood, the power of their words becomes increasingly diverse. Sometimes their speech will yield such volume it becomes a sonic weapon. At others, it could clear the scrap-code infecting an ancient machine-spirit, or gently push out a tainted blade from a wound its stuck in.

-One with Brahma: The twins have insights into the ultimate reality of the world. Most evidently this is expressed in their ability to perform maths and similar processes that would otherwise require entire Forgeworlds’ worth of cogitators to perform; indeed, it is said in rumour that they know the final digit of pi. Further, it is said their vision is sharp enough to see the very atoms of the world and in all spectra, whilst their hearing can span whole worlds. Nearly any object or information that crosses them will be found with near instant comprehension. They run models within their minds that make lying to them particularly difficult. Yet, if one successfully deceives the twins this will cause something like a memory-leak for a computer within their minds. They will fall into a stupor before dissolving into a metallic puddle, only reconstituting themselves in weeks, months, or potentially even years depending on the depth of the deception. It is for the reason of this simultaneous fragility and strength of their minds that the twins will try to avoid matters of the warp, for even with their initially infantile understanding and considerations of the matter they already found the inability to quantify or arithmetically compute the Empyrean to cause great mental anguish. Yet as they master everything in the world, they still yearn for the day they may likewise master what is outside of it.

-Form: The twins are considerably shorter than most of their other siblings. But despite not bearing as powerful and imposing a form, they are hardly less durable. This is owing largely to their skin being a silvery silvery fluid that flows into new forms across their skeleton, hardening and softening for different impacts and strikes that may come upon it making them exceptionally resistant to cutting and crushing strikes alike. The Emperor likely intended this ability for the Twins to mould their faces into beautiful forms such that they may appear as beautiful and appealing as possible to any culture they come across. But, instead in an almost perversion of this, the ability is largely used by them to create sockets, ports, and other such interfaces for technology within their bodies.

Appearance: The twins are shorter than most of their siblings by around a foot, with largely androgynous forms. Their skin is a flowing silvery substance swirling across their flesh to new shapes giving the appearance of men or women across the siblings on top of their otherwise gender neutral bodies. This fluidity of skin has them be works of art in appearance without any effort, their image further transmogrifying to the beauty standards of whatever culture they come across. Yet typically they choose to conceal their appearance in red, Omnissian robes. As well, they typically plug in great deals of machinery and technology into themselves that they easily interface with as they mold their bodies to become sockets, ports and plugs to connect. Thus it is rare for any save those they truly need to be diplomatic with to see their inherent aesthetic and one instead simply witnesses what they could easily mistake for particularly large Tech Priests.

Concept: The twins were likely designed by the Emperor to be the premiere diplomats and orators among his children, and yet by virtue of their placement on Mars were in practice robbed of this destiny and given wholly new ones by their induction into the Omnissian cult. While certainly their speech and insight into other people is still present, it has transmogrified into something physically and metaphorically mechanical rather than human. An appreciation for peoples was warped into appreciation for machinery. Faith in the future of humanity has been transformed into faith of the Omnissiah’s benediction to the people of the ultimate equation. While not quite disdain, the twins have come to look upon the unaugmented and unfaithful to the Omnissiah with a feeling of seeing animals, cattle, or even pets. Inferior, almost pitiable beings that while potentially having value as say a house cat or a cow might, they will always be expendable if the needs of a real person demand it.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Fabricator General

Individual Character
Character Name: Fabricator General Archmagos Salkor Hyfoj

Rank/Role: Archmagos of Olympus Mons

Appearance: As any Magos of many years, Salkor is an ancient agglomeration of machinery. Beneath coils and slabs of plasteel and adamantium there is a small patch of red robes and viewing lenses. He does not have legs or any other traditional means of movement. Rather there are a series of glowing anti-gravitic engines around the area one imagines his "waist" that give him a rather wraith-like appearance as he spins and wriggles through the air with vast crimson robes flowing behind. As well, the Archmagos has an exceptional amount of mecha-dendrites and mechanical tentacles even for one of his status owing to his constant need to interface with as many databanks as possible. For this reason, he is often seen with a baggage train of hundreds of similarly hovering databanks and cogitators, a small army of servitors and lesser tech-priests typically having to follow to maintain these. It is for this reason of immobility that with the years the Fabricator has become ever more stationary, digging ever deeper into Olympus Mons to accommodate his ceaselessly growing lair of servers, databanks, and cogitators.

Biography:
For all of his relevance to the Martian Cult, the Fabricator General is not a native to Mars. He was born near the Yndonesic, to a family of followers of the Singularitarian Brotherhood. The Cult was despite completely Terran origin very similar to the Mechanicum in its belief of transhumanism. Yet, millennia ago, during the adolescence of a boy named Salkor the Cult's presence on Terra was effectively destroyed. But, in the Brotherhood's technological advancement, they had just enough space faring capacity left - perhaps the very last spaceworthy craft on all Terra - to flee the world. Though less than a million managed to flee and only a few thousand survived the exit of Terra's Orbit from crashing into space debris brought on by the Kessler syndrome, many nevertheless managed to land upon Mars for safety.

The vast majority of the landed folk found ignoble ends, very lowly positions within the Mechanicum awaiting them as they struggled to reconcile the few, but nonetheless important doctrinal differences between their own ideology and the galaxy spanning religion born on Mars.

Yet, Salkor was just young but intelligent enough to adapt to the new world he came into. Lucky enough to become a mere Lexmechanic, he was careful to never step out of line through his efforts for fear that his Terran heritage be used against him. His progress through the ranks of the Mechanicum was thus glacially slow as he was careful to not take any major initiative lest a boundary be crossed, and his increases of ranks often came dangerously close to a time when his previous levels of enhancement weren't sufficient to extend his lifespan any further. But despite the pace, he nevertheless did progress through the ranks of the Mechanicum. Eventually becoming a true Tech-Priest, his gradual progress had a small degree of benefit for his future in that he met a great many other figures ascending the ranks of the Mechanicum that was a very crude sort of networking.

It was thus that well over a thousand years over his birth, Magos Hyfoj was by seniority and greater trust of his superior considered first in line to the rank of Fabricator Locum. The Fabricator Locum was far younger than Salkor, and indeed for some years Salkor was his superior before he was surpassed. It was at last that Salkor was in a sufficiently high position that he felt secure enough that the ancient issues of Terran origin from when he was more meat than plasteel were finally beneath him. Now he was a complete inductee into the Machine Cult that had more confidence in his faith than most natives. Now he had gained a great deal of ambition beyond mere survival and comfort, ideas that now seemed alien. Yet, all of this ambition was with the Omnissiah's will in mind.

The first act of major initiative he showed in his career was when he lobbied the Fabricator Locum and the Fabricator General by proxy to send out an armada of Explorator fleets. Recounting the activity of his Terran home that now seemed more like a bad dream than a true past, Salkor convinced the Martian governance that Mars needed to be more proactive lest in study and research within the comforts of their forgeworlds the Mechanicum become complacent, soft, easy to be swept up by less learned but larger civilizations just as the Brotherhood of Singularitarianism was long ago.

Though reluctant to devote some grand exodus to study and explore the galaxy, the Fabricator General at the time nonetheless agreed to the base proposal, partially simply to strengthen ties to distant Forgeworlds that had grown cold with time as communication was made more difficult by the waning number of Navigators and Astropaths in the clutches of the Martians.

It was not too long after this that the prior Fabricator General died, perished by assassination from a Servitor within the flesh of whom were hidden dozens of melta bombs. Though Salkor ascended to the second highest rank of Mars as a result of this, many were eager to point fingers at him believing this to be some sort of play from the refugees of the Singularitarians for perceived slights and mistreatments. But though he bore what he learned from them at the back of his mind he considered them a nuisance from his past. Thus he was happy to make a show of cracking down on them to restore confidence from the rest of Mars in his position. With most of his former brethren dead, he cracked down upon their children he could track down for crimes real or imagined. Though unsophisticated, the show of force was nonetheless appreciated by the many thousands in positions of power that thought an imposter was in their ranks.

Fortuitous then, was that the death of the following Fabricator General came several centuries later, when the last suspicions of Salkor were at last eroded. With his predecessor melting down a reactor he pushed to its limit in the midst of high power demands for a particularly interesting calculation, it was at last Salkor's turn to hold the highest rank of the entire Mechanicum.

Salkor would privately admit to himself that he was admittedly not prepared for the position. Though in recent years he was happy to show great will compared to what he had displayed prior, his entire life having been spent not pushing any boundaries made it very difficult to assume his new position of Fabricator General when he realized just how many different interest groups he would have to balance.

But, balance he would. He ordered the construction of a great many cogitators and other necessary infrastructure to allow himself to do many calculations, careful to likewise build sufficient power infrastructure to not be atomized as his predecessor. With this machinery the necessary computations would be made such that in almost all issues brought to him the Fabricator General could find some sort of compromise.

Very quickly the nature of Salkor's reign became clear to those around him. As de-facto leader of the entire Machine Cult, Salkor was convinced that it was his sacred duty to serve all the children of the Omnissiah rather than to be the monarch of a Martian Empire. He gave great audience to the Knight Houses in service to Mars and the broader Mechanicum, offering them many a new world that the Explorator fleets had discovered. Great deference was shown to the Forge Worlds outside of Mars, a near equal voice given to them as the scions of the Machine Cult's homeworld. Acknowledgement was given to many a sect of the Machine Cult, conflicts over minor doctrinal differences ordered to cease outright hostilities and co-exist.

The rule of Fabricator General Hyfoj would be a curious one with the progress of time. Though the Speaker of the Martian parliament, the majority of his support base was from the greater diaspora of the Mechanicum and its appendages like the Knight Houses, extra-solar Forgeworlds, and minor sects and tiny schisms that enjoyed his protection. Though these factors were important, the critical thing that prevented a vote of no confidence or other means to depose him were cyclical campaigns of public works. Though Salkor did not believe he could herald some sort of golden-age for the Mechanicum, he believed he could at the very least prevent it from falling into a dark age of complacency as a cruel mirror to the unrestrained changes of the dark age of technology. Centuries old infestations of feral servitors were cleansed from many worlds. Explorator Fleets were made to kidnap navigators and astropaths from other human civilizations to restock the waning supply of these critical mutants within the Mechanicum's inventory. Great projects of stellar defence systems were made to prevent raids from spaceborne pirates, committees were set up to create solutions for ancient and yet unsolved scap-code threats and patches in software and wetware were developed. Orkoid worlds were bathed in fire to prevent their rise in threat, and new systems of audits were made to seek out hereteks.

The exploits did not do enough to earn Salkor the favour of the Magoses of the Martian Parliament, but they did enough to curry favour with their underlings who felt their ramifications on their daily lives. It was just as the mechanical eyes of the Fabricator General began to turn to Terra, that all of his attention was stolen by the landing of a set of gargantuan, silvery children in a crater outside of Olympus Mons.

From Ashes We Rise: An Alternate Warhammer 40,000 Unification and Great Crusade RP

<Snipped quote by Bugman>

Whether I'd accept it or not would probably depend on the sheet, but as a concept I could see it working, possibly with some tweaks, given we know the Emperor at least has the possibility to tavel between the worlds of the Solar system it's quite likely he'd have found them at a similar time to Alpharius, but it's an interesting enough dynamic if done correctly that we can discuss :)

@Ezekiel

Very well you can consider me on board for now