Penny

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

Katia was learning rather a lot about orks. The information wasn’t bringing her a lot of solace however. By now the defense of pump station Epsilon-Phi Three-Seven was entering its sixth hour. Intermittent rain continued to fall in cloud bursts even as the eastern horizon began to brighten with the coming dawn. The causeway itself was illuminated by powerful floodlights mounted on the pump station. Initially there had been four but bolter fire from the orks had put two of them out of commission. The surviving two floods painted the causeway well enough. A carpet of green bodies lay across it with other green masses floating in the gently sloshing lake water on either side. Cabel and Vance were down there now, dragging bodies up against the entry port in a grisly barricade. Each cadaver they approached was made sure of with a quick bayonent thrust, a lesson they had learned early on when one of the orks had enough life left in it to bite a chunk out of a troopers leg. They were then added to the pile that lay stinking against the side of the pump station, making it that much harder for the orks to reach the brass entryway. With a cry of WAAAAAAGGH! A dozen of the orks on the lake shore charged the causeway, brandishing their axes. The Imperials opened fire as Cabel and Vance scrambled back up the ropes by which they had decended. It wasn’t a furious storm of fire, rather a patter of carefully aimed shots. They were running low on powercells, and despite the enginseers best efforts, attempts to recharge spent packs were painfully slow. Katia calculated that they would be completely dry in another hour if things kept up at the current rate. She settled the sights of her las gun at the hip joint of a charging ork, exhaled, held the stasis and squeezed. The weapon cracked and a smoking crater appeared between leg and pelvis. The ork howled in rage as its leg buckled and it tumbled into the water with a mighty splash, the weight of its gear dragging it under the brackish water. Occasionally they were able to drag themselves up, but more frequently not. There was a bright flash on the shore line and Katia looked up to see an ork with a shoulder launched missile tube shiloutted by the back blast of his weapon. The missle streaked towards them for a second before some mechanical failure caused it to veer upwards in a flaming loop which ended as it smashed into another group of orks who had been jeering on the shore with a vast sooty explosion that scattered green bodies and body parts in all directions. The roar of orkish laughter rang out from several places, including the survivors of the abortive missile attack. Learning a lot. Not much of it made her feel any better. Despite the las fire raking them the charging orks were only a dozen yards from the corpse barricade. Prax gave her an urgent look and she nodded. Trooper Klave didn’t wait for an order, he squeezed the trigger and the orkish bolter, ripped out of the capture battle wagon, roared to life. Every time it fired the noise of it took Katia by surprised. Flecks of gravel sparked up through the air and gouts of water sprayed as the weapon hosed the causeway. It was so inaccurate that even at a range of only a few dozen feet, most of the rounds went wide, high, or otherwise failed to hit the target. Katia suspected that the noise of the thing was the point and that any actual damage it did was purely incidental. The orks, staggering and wounded by las fire, jerked and collapsed as bolts detonated, severing arms and pulping internal organs.

“Down!” Katia shouted and every imperial dropped below the cover of the parapet. Gunfire erupted from the shoreline. Bolt guns, pistols, vehicle mounted auto-cannons, even flame throwers despite the distance all returned fire an instant later. Shells rang off the ferocrete and sparked off the pipework above, gouting steam in whistling shrieks that faded as quickly as they began. As far as Katia could tell the gunfire was instinctive, a desire simply to increase the noise and ‘dakka’ in the air. This time it had the effect of cutting down the last few orks before they reached the barricade. It was puzzling that the orks didn’t use their crude firearms more frequently, in fact if they had they would have taken the human position hours ago, but the glandular desire to rip their enemies apart in close combat had thus far been nothing but an advantage to the eighteen surviving troops of second platoon. That would probably hold true until the ammunition ran out and then the orks would be able to rip to their hearts content. Katia pulled the power pack from her las gun and thumped it several times against the ferocrete, an old guardsman’s trick to coax a few more rounds out of a dying pack, and then reseated it with a click.



“Commissar,” one of the Enginseers called as Cabel and Vance threw their lines over and prepared to scale down and savage for ammunition among the bodies. They hadn’t yet tried to use the captured ork hand weapons, Katia was privately skeptical that such a thing was possible given the ridiculous size and recoil of the things, but it helped to be doing anything other than thinking about the fact that their own weapons were about to be useless. Katia stood up, stretching the ache of kneeling at the firing stoop out of her legs and headed to the specialist. His grim face didn’t promise good news.



“We finally were able to get through to command,” the Enginseer told her. Katia didn’t understand the techno-theology of it, but they had been trying for several hours to use the pump stations pipework as an antenna to boost the range of their squad comms.



“Good news,” Katia said, though there was a question in her tone. The enginseer shook his head glumly.



“Most of the landing sites are engaged, they said the soonest anyone could get here is this afternoon,” the trooper reported. And we will never last until this afternoon he didn’t report. Katia nodded. Commisariat training prepared a person for a situation very much like this.



“Very well, spread the word that we got through to command and that aid will be forthcoming,” Katia ordered. The enginseer blanched.

“Ma’am I…” Katia cut him off with a sharp look.

“We got through to command and aid will be forthcoming,” she repeated firmly, her hand strayed almost unconsciously to the flap of her pistol holster.



“Uh…. Yes Ma’am!” the enginseer stammered. Katia nodded her face solem. She could not afford to let morale collapse now, if they were going to die, let it be on their feet with hope in their hearts.



“The Emperor protects specialist,” she assured him.

Maverick Malediction

The party above made things somewhat easier. Calliope had assumed that once they were within the manor she would be unable to use magic without giving herself away. Above her she could feel the workings of a half dozen mages, all at the small time level, probably entertaining guest or performing minor spells. So long as she didn’t get too fancy, she ought not attract any attention. That went doubly for any spells she had prepared earlier, needing only a trickle of magic to wake them. With a flick of her wrist she altered her clothing, turning her dusty but practical gear into a black silk evening gown with slitted leg and a plunging back that made it all the way to the bottom of her waist. Jewelry was a different mater, literally. Conjuring metal up out of the ether was an energy intensive and noisy business. Inspiration struck and she crossed to a brass wall sconce and removed the lantern that hung from it. Then she cut her thumb and pressed the bead of blood to the sconce. The brass began to move, shimmering and slithering and separating into strands which polished each other with a rasp as they dripped from the wall and onto Calliope’s arm. The strands of metal coiled up her arm, weaving the gleaming brass into intricate nets around her wrists and neck. There was no easy way to create stones but it would probably do.



“I don’t suppose you can wiggle your fingers and make mine fit any better can you?” Neil asked as he finished pulling on a doublet that was several sizes too big for him.



“I could try, but there is the off chance the spell would remember that you aren’t me and try to strangle you with your own hose,” she confessed. Neil shuddered slightly and plucked at his doublet.



“Not to worry, breathable is so in this year.”



They reached the party by ascending the winding stairs. It was audible long before it was visible, a muted cacophony of tinkling laughter, shifting feet and orchestral music. They emerged from the cellar onto a grand ballroom. The floor was set with interlocking squares of white and green marble and vast columns of the same material lined the walls. As with the cellar, tropical trees were growing, apparently out of the solid stone floor. Lush vegetation and tropical flowers gave the hall a strange cast. Glistening purple fruit hung from fern fronded plants and black and gold flowers seemed to follow the guests hungrily. There were perhaps a hundred people in attendance, all dressed in colorful silks and shimmering cloth of gold. Judging from their dress they were members of the Mageocricy and local nobles of the kind who were always willing to kow tow to them. An orchestra lined one wall, playing a dance that Calliope was not familiar with. She was no judge of music but she suspected it was a masterful performance. Wine, drink and drugs were all flowing freely, carried on platters by servants in orange and puce livery. Other forms of entertainment were also being enjoyed. Sheets of silk had been hung across the entrances to small bowers. It was sheer enough that the silhouettes of the couples, or larger groupings cavorting on the other side could be made out, even if the individual figures were anonymous. As Calliope watched a chained girl with a gag in her mouth was half led half dragged into one of the bowers by a haughty looking noble. Another staggered clear of the silks, long knife cuts running down her naked back and weeping blood. She took a few despairing steps towards the dance floor before a jowly woman, wrapped in a bloody sheet, stepped out and grabbed her dragging her back in. Worst of all was a grotesquely fat man leading a trio of slack featured women to a bower. The followed in perfect step. All three were dead, having been reanimated by one of the mages present. Judging by the ligature marks around their necks they had all been strangled, probably during the first course of this evening’s depravity. Calliope could very clearly hear the fat man giggling, an oddly girlish and grating sound, even across the noisy hall.



“Charm the paint of walls these people,” Calliope muttered loud enough for Neil to hear. She placed her hand in his and allowed him to gently lead her across the floor. She took a drink from one of the servers as she passed, though she didn’t drink from the fluted goblet of crimson liquid. A drunken man bumped into them and leered at Calliope but she ignored him completely, sweeping regally on.

The music changed to a waltz she did recognize and she guided Neil’s hand to her hip and the other to her bare back, turning slowly in the steps of the dance to take in the entirety of the ballroom jungle. She noticed for the first time that the ceiling had been replaced with a starscape that wasn’t familiar to her. Small lantern’s shaped to look like the moon in various stages of the lunar cycle floated twenty feet above them to illuminate the spectacle bright as day. She leaned close to Neil, whispering in his ear.



“The book will be in a library or strongbox,” she cooed, “it will be defended by physical and magical traps.” They swept passed another couple as the tempo increased. Neil seemed to have a good sense for the pattern even if he didn’t have the flawless execution of a noble scion.

“It’s bound in black leather and is about the size of a man’s palm,” she continued. It probably would have been wise to impart this information earlier, but she had not honestly expected that they would make it this far.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

The K-21 was of the Grimwold class destroyer from the Alliance yards at Biscane. Under optimal conditions it had a crew of 120 spacers plus officers ands supernumeraries. Sabatine had to handle it with a prize crew of twenty. It had taken the entire rigging crew of the Vickie nearly two days to put the battered rigging into something of a workable condition. Fortunately the rig had been mostly down when the plasma cannons had hammered the vessel, but there had still been half a dozen masts that were welded to the hull, and everything from A through D had been sheared away. The partial jury rig they had assembled would have made their sailing instructors in the academy physically sick. The roll alone meant they had to re-enter sidereal space every twelve hours to perform a manual correction and recalculation. They made three stops on the voyage to Herculaneum. Each time the Vickie was waiting for them, much handier with its full sails and larger crew. Each time Sabatine transmitted a quick report of their progress. It made for dismal reading about it didn't quite do justice to the reality of being woken every hour or so to deal with some new problem with the rig, or to help the three techs assigned to the power room nurse the plant along. It was one of those thankless jobs that seemed to make up the bulk of RCN life. It didn't win any glory, nor would it garner any renown. The best Sabatine could hope for was that an admiral reading the report would grunt with approval before moving on to his next task. In the spacer's bars however, the tale of grueling endurance would be told and exaggerated. Spacers would say things like, that bitch never gave us a moment's rest, or everytime we turned around there she was. It would sound like complaints, but there would be an undertone of respect. Spacefaring life, and the RCN in particular, was too dangerous a place for officers to survive on rank alone. You needed your crew to respect you, and the only way to do that was to be in the same hard places they were.

“Transition,” Sabatine announced and immediately felt her teeth bore up into her brain as they dropped back into real space. She was sitting alone on the bridge of K-21, the rest of the prize crew either on the hull or in the engine room. The only other person onboard who could operate the astrogation computer was Shapti, an able spacer who was striking for a sailing master’s warrant, but she was grabbing a few hours sleep in the captains cabin across the corridor. Opinions varied on whether sleeping through a transition made it better or worse, but if you got tired enough your body would make that decision for you.

“K-21 break, break, break!” Kaiden’s voice broke into the comm circuit. Sabatine sat up feeling like she had been doused in cold water. She nosed the ship sharply downwards towards the ecliptic, high drive motors flairing to life with a buzz.

“Vickie this is K-2…” she began, trying to puzzle out what was going on from the PPI. Everything looked normal. The RCS Hamptor, an aging destroyer was on picket just outside the minefield and. There were missile tracks streaking between the Hamptor an the Vickie.

“Herculaneum is in the hands of the Alliance. Disengage and run for point Delta 3 Seven.”

Nothing made sense. How could a major fleet base be in the hands of the Alliance? How had they captured the Hamptor? Why was Kaiden still here if the base was in hostile hands? The last point clicked into place. He had waited for her, slugging it out with the destroyer to warn her before she drifted into range of the minefield.

“AFS K-21, engage Cinnibar vessel Victory at once,” her comm panel blurted. Sabatine stared at it for a moment. Of course the Alliance didn’t know that K-21 had been captured. They would figure that out in a few moments though, once they realized she wasn’t responding to their coded IFF.

“Acknowledged control,” she responded, trying to mimic the nasal Plesance accent she associated with the Alliance. There was no way she could fight the ship with only twenty spacers aboard. The only option was to run as Kaiden had ordered. Shapti burst through the door looking alarmed. Sabatine made a quick gesture to one of the jump seats, her other hand bringing up an attack board.

“Signal the Vickie on microwave and acknowledge,” she snapped, unable to split her attention to a third task while she handled maneuver and the attack board, modifying the preset attack plan as quickly as she was able. The Hamptor was already closing on the Vickie, its four tubes launching another salvo. It was going to make it very difficult for Kaiden to safely transition.

“Launching one,” Sabatine announced with what she hoped was appropriate sangfor. The ship jolted as super heated steam shoved the missiles out of their tubes and clear of the hull a moment before their high drives ignited, streaking them off down range as blue lines on Sabatine’s attack board.

“Launching two.”

The comms board crackled angrily to life. Shapti should have caught the comms but having no idea what was going on simply let it pass through to Sabatine with an alarmed look.

“K-21 what the hell are you playing at those missiles…” she dumped the link, too busy to give it any thought. As the commander of the Hamptor correctly noted, the missiles she had fired were not aimed at the Vickie. They were aimed at the point Sabatine calculated the Hamptor would be at when the missiles arrived, a staggered area between the hostile destroyer and the Cinnabar corvette. Three were aimed slightly ahead, another aimed slightly behind in case the destroyer opted to brake. She pulled up the astrogation display and cut the high drives, allowing the charge on the ship to zero out. There was no time to actually plot a course anywhere, besides off the top of her head she had no idea where Delta-3-7 might be.

“Launching, three…. Four.” Sabatine reported mechanically. There was the dull rumble of the missle tracks as the ship began to crank fresh ordnance into the four missile tubes. She dumped the attack board. She wasn’t going to wait around for the minute and a half it would take for the next salvo to be ready.

“Vickie, K-21 withdrawing as ordered,” she broadcast and punched the insertion button with her thumb. The destroyer shuddered back into the safety of the matrix, leaving Sabatine drenched in cold sweat with her heart pounding in her throat.

The Sunday Group

@PatientBean As you probe the computers you seem to keep coming back to entries Madame Lafitte's a club/longue in the French Quater. There is even an old case file that mentions the place but dosen't provide any detail other than notation: Aua, das tat weh. This is the pay off from Alyx' clue.

The Sunday Group

@Cohors Afraid so

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

“Commissar please, I really must protest,” medicae Gressler whined. Katia fixed the man with a long suffering gaze. He shrank back somewhat from her chilly Valhallan gaze but didn’t quite retreat. Gressler was a nervous looking man whose hair was prematurely balding but was by all reports an excellent medicae.



“These men have broken limbs, probably internal injuries, if we load them onto that …thing and drive them over rough terrain… well me might as well just shoot them now.” He squared his shoulders as though expecting a physical blow. Katia spat out the mouthful of fruit she had been eating. It was somewhat bitter and astringent, but not altogether unpalatable to someone used to soylent veridans and guard rations.



“Well given, that this crash site will be overrun with orks within the hour, long before relief can get here, those are pretty much our two options medicae,” she replied grimly. In all likelihood many of the wounded would die if they were moved, but there was no option. Those too badly wounded to walk were being loaded into the back of the ork contraption that Katia had captured. Having felt the thing bucking and gyrating beneath her, it was hard to fault the medicae’s assessment.



“The Emperor Protects,” she told him, clapping him on the shoulder as she stood. Prax was waving that they were good to go, what little extra gear they could salvage piled onto the wagon with their wounded.



Despite the down hill, progress proved to be frustratingly slow. Though the engineseers managed to find a way slow the ork vehicle, no amount of chanting or ritual percussion could convince the stubborn ork machine spirit not to stall constantly if the throttle were at anything short of full power. Adding to that, it had a tendency to bog if driven in the watery fields, or to tangle if driven through the crop vegetation. More than once Katia considered going up and over the embankment, onto the relatively open slope, but being in the open with the orks about sounded like a bad idea. It was almost two hours before they found their first sign of Imperial civilization. The irrigated fields gave way to a broad reservoir, an expanse of muddy water several hundred feet across. In the middle, on an artificial island accessible by a causeway of crushed rock and gravel bounded by large oozlite pilings, was a pump station. The building had been constructed with all the grandiose enthusiasm of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Large pipes sank into the lake at intervals like rusted skeletal fingers. It rose almost thirty meters over the lake, a broad ferocrete rampart surmounted by twisting piping and ductwork of uncertain function. Now and again vapor of some kind vented from it with a hiss audible even from several hundred meters away. The great cogwheel of the Mechanicus stood above its imposing entrance, verdigris bronze looking sickly in the fading light.



“Well that is something,” Katia remarked, feeling cheered to see something Imperial standing undemolished. That in itself was proof that the orks didn’t yet have total control of the country. An imperial installation might mean comms and perhaps even first aid equipment, though given the cog boys tendency to ignore the needs of the flesh, there was no certainty.

“No welcoming committee,” Katia noted to no one in particular. One of the Enginseers, a woman named Clavin, shook her head.



“It might all be automated, perhaps run by a few maintenance servitors,” she opined. Katia nodded.

“Corporal, lets get in there and see if we can find some billets while the enginseers see if we can get someone on the comms,” Katia called, getting a thumbs up from the non-com who began shouting orders. Night was falling fast, but it was still light enough to see a heavy mass of cloud building to the east. Katia was no magus meterologica but she suspected that it would be raining before too long.



Thunder split the sky overhead, bathing the pump station in purplish light. The surface of the lake rippled with the constant slashing rain, reflecting the light like fields of amethyst. Katia stood in the entrance portal looking out, a mug of ration pack recaf in her hand. It was terrible. That was the definition of ration pack recaf, so bitter it made her sinus twitch despite being loaded to near saturation with condensed milk, but it was hot and the mountain rain had a chill to it. True to sapper Clavin’s prediction, the pump station was entirely automated. A staff of a dozen servitors trundled around the place on articulated tracks which could transform to grips to climb ladders. The things mindlessly circled the complex, pausing at intervals to transmit bursts of sound in the weird scratchy language that the Mechanicus used to propitiate machine spirits. Clavin thought that she could repurpose the status beacons to create active comms but it was slow going. If they hadn’t succeeded by morning they were going to have to make a decision. As far as Katia was concerned that meant pushing on towards the costal littoral, though Prax was advocating to sit tight while they sent the bike on ahead to find help. Both approaches had their advantages, but both were inferior to simply calling for help.



“Lo-stick commissar?” Prax asked, looming up out of the darkness behind her. Katia shook her head, continuing to peer out into the rain.



“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she asked after a moment.

“Shouldn’t you?” he rejoined. There was silence for long moment, disturbed only by the crack of thunder and the continuing ripple of rain hitting the surface of the lake.



“I wanted to ask you something commissar,” Prax said at last, his face illuminated each time he took a drag on his lo-stick. Katia didn’t respond, something out in the rain had caught her attention.



“About what happened on Pavonis, I…” Katia yanked the lo-stick from his hand and crushed it beneath her boot, holding up a finger for silence. Over the thunder came the sound of distant guttural voices. Shadows moved on the hillside, too large to be men. A particularly vivid burst of lightning cracked above them, illuminating a score or more of orks moving through the rain. Marching was far too strong a word, meandering might have been better. One of the brutes even appeared to be splashing in the puddles. Light glinted off the edges of choppas and the crude bolters they carried.

“Frak me…” Prax began but Katia covered his mouth with her hand. The orks were headed in this general direction, but they might not have been able to make out much of the pump station in the darkness. Lifting her left hand she crooked her fingers into a field signal. Stand to. Prax nodded and disappeared. A moment later a half dozen of the Gudrenites crept into the vestibule, lasguns aimed down the causeway. Prax made his own field signals. Two squads here. Two squads overwatch. That meant they were up in the pipeworks with a field of fire down onto the causeway. Smart.



“Oi, it’s a hummie buldn!” an orkish voice shouted.

“Wot?!” another called and there were general cries of excitement and discovery. The orks came forward at a curious trot, splashing into the lake before realizing it was two deep and circling around to the causeway. Katia eased her bolt pistol from its holster and racked the slide. She signaled to the troops. Hold fire. The orks were looping across the causeway with careless leisure, oblivious to the lashing rain and the lightning overhead. Katia could smell them now, a vegetative reek like fungus and old socks.



“Ya think there is any lootz?” the leader, was asking, identifiable by his larger size and the pair of curling animal tusks worked into his crude helmet.

“Wait wot dat sme…” the brute began to ask.

“Fire!” Katia ordered, putting two bolts into the leaders neck, that sprayed blood in a broad arc. Las fire erupted around her as the Gudrunites opened fire. Sizzling energy cut from the entry way and down from above. The dying leader was struck five or six times before tumbling off the causeway with a splash. Any human force would have been checked by the sudden ambush. Not so the orks. With a defeaning cry of ‘WAAAAAAAAGH!” the survivors charged the human position, choppas waving. Even for Orks it was suicide. Point blank las fire cut into them from two directions. Bodies flopped to the causeway or tumbled into the lake, crude clothing shouldering with flash burns. Even so they came on, screaming and frothing at the mouth to reach the humans, great yellow fangs snapping with excited fury. The last of the beasts fell not ten meters from the doorway, dragging itself forward by the finger nails until Katia emptied its brain pain with a close range bolt pistol shot.



“Do you think…” Prax began, but his question was answered immediately. “WAAAAAAAAAAGH” echoed from the darkness as dozen of other orks rushed down the slope to join the deceased scouts. Katia pulled the clip from her pistol and replaced it with a fresh magazine with mechanical precision.

“Get the door closed!” she shouted at Prax. The non com looked around in confusion, but another trooper grabbed a crank and began to turn it. The great brass cogwheel began to lower from the celling like an ancient portcullis, sinking down to seal the building with a clang.



“Better get these troops topside so they can defend the causeway,” Katia said grimly, “it appears we are under siege.”

Maverick Malediction

“Its enough to make me regret that I had to kill you the first time,” Calliope responded. The words were glib but truthfully she was impressed. The minotaur thing was clearly designed to face of both magical and physical threats. But where a group of knights would have been hacked to bits, Neil had triumphed through guile and quick wits. It was a strange thing to have a partner, even stranger to have one that she was at least reasonably sure wasn’t planning to knife her in the back at the first opportunity. There was no time to ponder however. Whomever had set the necromantic guardian would notice the change in the spell eventually and very probably send someone to investigate. She examined the trapdoor the thing had been guarding. Potent wards were laid across it in complex patterns that seared Calliope’s mage sight. There were spells graven into the wood and surrounding stone that would strip the flesh from a woman’s bone, snatch her soul from her body and worse besides. Even more impressively, the spells were intermingled like the threads of a spider’s web. Calliope couldn’t pick them apart without triggering or alerting others.



“I have to find a way between,” she mumbled, not really intending the remark to be heard.

“Between what?” Neil asked. She opened her mouth to ask what she could possibly be talking about beside the spells but the words died on her lips. Between what. Neil was thinking in terms of physical locations, not the spells themselves.



“That isn’t so stupid a question afterall,” Calliope declared, her smile flashing bright in the darkness. Without another word she set off down the tunnel, moving deeper into the area that her mind map told her housed Therman’s mansion. She stopped when they came to another opening, this one filled with strange glowing fungus which clung to the walls.



“Are we going to have to fight mushrooms or something?” Neil asked uneasily. Calliope didn’t blame him, there was an unnatural smell coming from the cavern that seemed to compliment the sickly light.



“We would if we were going in,” Calliope agreed, “so we wont do that.”



“We go back then?” Neil asked, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the ossuary. Calliope shook her head.

“No,” she replied, “I have another idea. Lift me up.” Neil’s confusion was palpable.

“What?” he demanded.

“Lift. Me. Up,” Calliope responded speaking slowly as though to a child or an idiot. Hesitantly Neil crouched down and made a stirrup of his hands. She stepped into it and he lifted her easily, corded muscles bunching. Calliope balanced herself with a hand against the corridor wall and reached up to touch the ceiling with her left hand.

"Try not to admire the view too much," she teased as she ran her fingers over the carved stone ceiling, probing at cracks and small imperfections.



“If all the entrances are warded…” she mused, “Then all we need is another entrance.” She held her hand against the tunnel roof for a moment, reaching into a pouch to touch a spell component, then she climbed down.

“Ok… so…” Neil began, glancing up at the ceiling. A thin trickle of dust was drifting down from where Calliope had touched the stone. It began to increase to a flow of sand, like that through an hour glass. The took a step back as the deluge continued to increase, pounds of grey sand pouring downwards in eddying clouds. There was a cracking sound and heavy paving stones fell through the hole the sand was eating in the roof, kicking up shockwaves of sand and dust. Something heavy and wooden fell through and hit the pile with a thunk. It upended with a crack and hit the ground, beginning to leak dark liquid into the sand. Calliope made a gesture with her hand and the flow of sand stopped. Neil sniffed the air.

“Smells like wine,” he commented. Calliope nodded and they both stepped forward. The object was indeed a wine barrel, an expensive vintage judging by the seal. Above them was a three foot square hole, bored into the ceiling as though the stone itself had been nothing but sand. A smell of must and wine came down from above, and she could see heavy timber crossbeams.

“A wine cellar,” she observed, sounding pleased.



“If all the doors are warded, all we need is a new door.”

The Sunday Group

@Atalanta@POOHEAD189

Ok things are about to happen at the Gas Station!

Gas Station Gaff

Firstly - The Petersons did indeed see the accident. They saw the car in question come tearing out of a dirt road (Cookingham Road) about six miles away. The SUV was weaving erratically and going way too fast. It left them in the dust but they passed the scene of the accident a few minutes after it happened. They called it into the police. This is the payoff for Primrose's clue. After they pass on this information a car is going to arrive and two men are going to get out. Their intent is to snatch and silence the Petersons. If they realize you are interrogating her they will try to kill you also. Worse still, they seem to be mostly resistant to magic....

@PatientBean@Fetzen

What would you guys prefer? you could investigate the voodoo clue, continue to banter, or we could introduce a new clue from the information Fynn has been gathering.

The Sunday Group

@PatientBean I'm sorry, that did come across as more passive aggressive than I intended it to and I apologize. You make a good point about the cops.

Does anyone have a strong feeling on what out headquarters should look like?

The Sunday Group

So just to be clear... rather than trying to talk to the witnesses we all decided to go back to headquarters?