POOHEAD189

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

"Get those supplies on you balls of shit!"

"Move move! Go go!"

Zeb and Grimdal hauled up the last crate of the ammunition the groundcar would take. Across the road, the other men were finishing up their cargo along the way. Guardsmen were already cranking their vehicles, the exhaust rippling the morning air as the sun peeked over the horizon. The loud clacks and racking of turrets and ammo filled Zeb's ears as he hopped into the passengers seat, taking hold of the groundcar's handle and stood above the driver and passengers, lasgun held in the air.

There were eleven of them, popularly called Outrider Scout Vehicles or OSV's, favored by PDF or mercenaries that needed fast, sturdy, and reliable transportation without wanting to spend their weight in imperial credits for a true military vehicle. Found at an old abandoned depot five miles east of the landing zone, Emperor's grace, they had only found a score of Orks loitering about between there and here. The men outnumbered them and fought in ranks. None of them had even been touched, and once they made it to the hollowed out depot, the steel grate garage had a small supply of PDF equipment, mostly taken or looted by the Orks. Luckily, the groundcars' seats were too small for an ork to fit, so they left them relatively untouched. Four of them had heavy stubbers mounted on their backs. Not boltguns, but large caliber, gas powered, fully automatic turrets. Drum fed, they had four drums for each gun. Corporal Batte, the de facto leader of one of the squads, had used them before in the Second Agrellan Campaign in the Ultima Segmentum.

During the night, Specialist Rikkerd had intercepted a communique from headquarters and had managed to patch Zeb through to the nearest major, giving them a good idea of the current happenings in the area which coincided with a basic map they were provided with at landfall. There were mountains to the north and east, sweeping west until they stopped at the sea. The large town of Malfonte was currently under siege in the north, Du-retour being the largest rendezvous point and strong position for the wayward astra militarum drops that had been meant for a flanking attack. So far, the best they had been able to do was kill ork stragglers and divide the main xenos horde's attention, but no decisive operation had yet been conducted. They would wait another ten days before attacking north in force. To the south there were naught but wandering orks and holdouts of low-priority PDF troops. First Landing was still holding strong a few hundred kilometers to the south, but if Malfonte collapsed, there would be nothing to stop Gorbad from sweeping across the land and surround First Landing from all sides.

Zeb and the men weren't going north, south, or east, however. Katia's shuttle had been confirmed to be shot down sixty kilometers west of their position. At first light, they had gathered what food and ammunition they could, and as Zeb raised his hand, the corporals had given him the all clear. Even as he looked behind him, the horizon awash with smoke, flame, and specks of light flying like comets across the sky and hitting unknown targets in the atmosphere, the last door of the last OSV was closed.

Hagman smiled and cranked the car into gear, taking the radio mic from its holster and holding it up for Zeb to take. He did so, at once still amazed anyone was following his lead. On both Lorn V and Pavonis, he had been naught but a grunt, and he knew as soon as they found a Lieutenant or Emperor willing, Katia, he wouldn't lose complete authority just the same. But at the moment, he hoped he could lead well enough to save a few lives.

"Hope you all ate and took your piss breaks. We're not stopping until we get to that shuttle." He told them, the timbre in his voice unreservedly confident. "At fourteen hundred hours, I expect to rendezvous with Commissar Katia and whoever follows her, and at that I give up my claim on you, and we follow her lead. Conserve ammunition, mind the roads, and no heroics. We fight as a unit. Keep the guns trained to the outer edge of the perimeter. Now let's give 'em the wrath of the guard."

The men cheered, the OSVs now rolling out of the depot's broken fence and turning left over the broken road. The OSVs began to pick up speed, and due to their lack of roofing, the wind began whipping through the hair of the men who had lost their helmets. Thirty...forty...fifty kilometers an hour. Had they a straight road to the last known location of the shuttle, they would make it there before lunch, but nothing was guaranteed. Every farm looked blasted by artillery or ork wartrukks.

"You got a lot of dedication to that Commissar, Zeb. She must be quite the lady." Hagman called to him. Zeb blinked and was glad the radio channel hadn't remained open. The car went over a dip in the road, causing the men in it to jump as they conversed.

"Dedi- what?"

"Giving up your authority and all. Are the rumors about you two true?" He inquired curiously, eyes switching from the road to Zeb's face.

"She's a fucking commissar!" Zeb barked as if that answered all questions from then until Emperor come. Dedication!? He didn't want to get shot when they met up! Yeah, there was a camraderie and maybe a certain fondness, but Katia still had the authority to dome him at a moments notice, and any hint of insubordination was certainly grounds for that! What sort of rumors were being spread, exactly? "I'm a sergeant, if you take my word over hers I'll shoot you myself."

"Well, I wasn't thinking that. But the fact you had to say it, ya know?" Hagman added, which made absolutely no sense to Zeb. "Is it true she fights like a vengeful Valkyrie?"

Zeb opened his mouth to tell him off, but he was caught off guard with the lack of insanity in his latest question. "Uh... Yeah, I guess that's true." He admitted.

"Can't wait to meet her," he said back to Zeb. At that moment, the first artillery strikes of the day went underway. They were far off, but the men were intensely aware that the shells flew over their position.

Wh40k: One Step Beyond - A Rogue Trader Adventure (Closed)

Grimri "Ironclad" Haldengard

A crewman was on his knees, hammering away at a traitor with the butt end of a lasgun. The power pack had been yanked off mid-fight, Grimri having seen the struggle out of the corner of his eye. The lad couldn't shoot the gun anymore, so the lad did what he could and laid into the cultist with abandon, bludgeoning him into oblivion. That was twenty minutes ago. Grimi had killed six bastards in the time it took for him to turn around and see the same traumatized crew member still wailing on the pulped corpse of the enemy.

Grimri grabbed the rifle when it was next pulled back, and when the entranced crewman struggled, the squat slapped him and sent him to the ground. Not gently, but not too hard either. He had to knock a bit of sense into the boy while he still could. Idly, he tossed the lasgun to the side and retrieved his shotgun, reloading casually as he looked around. Something in the atmosphere had changed... he could tell they were no longer in the warp. He felt dizzy and disoriented, like a bad hangover with a light buzz. He could only imagine how it felt to normal men.

Minutes later, Grimri stepped onto the bridge. He had done little to clean himself, still covered in grime and blood and some other liquid he didn't want to guess. His beard was wild but his eyes were hard set. The lass Agathe was there, though her retainers weren't floating around her anymore.

"Nice scrap." Grimri remarked once she was done speaking. He had arrived just a few seconds behind her, not looking much better in the aspect of cleanliness. To be fair, he was less clean than she before they had engaged in battle and dismembered screaming men, so that was something. "The fact ye want me here and not helping yer team sweep the ship with the flamers shows me ye got something important on yer mind, sir."

Grimri wasn't stupid or blind, even if, at the end of the day, he was just specialized muscle and the garbageman. The squat looked around, wondering where the rest of the team was. Were they all dead?

"Where's the ratling fuck?"

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The cry was followed by harsh, guttural xenos words roared with inhumanely deep voices drowned out the cries of the men, even silencing them into a hush through sheer power. It only lasted until the brutes dispensed with roars and made good on what Orks were good at. The front Nob raised an axe that looked like a swathe of sharpened scrap steel strapped to the support beam of an engine. Behind him, orks nearly as large streamed in from the outside, choppas and shootas gleaming in rusted steel. They reached the first ranks of frightened soldiers, cutting off limbs, impaling men, and breaking their bodies with horrifying ease. Even so, the brave soldiers of the 207th and 208th Temperarius battalions fought like cornered animals, and Emperor knew that's what they were.

Zeb was mesmerized by the blood spray for a brief second, unable to look away until he took hold of his courage and wit. Hundreds of men still scrambled for their lasguns, and those that had them were fixing bayonets or looking for a clean shot they just couldn't get through the mass of men. Zeb saw a group of men, likely friends, traveling across the wake of officers behind him. He stopped their run with a shout, telling them of the racks of shotguns twelve meters behind them.

"Sir, those are for officers of your rank..." One of them hesitantly began, and the objection was very obviously a poor attempt at trying not to be recruited for a suicide mission.

"You'll get them and you'll follow me or we're all dead." Zeb ordered, holding his modified lasgun at the hip. He didn't raise it to be antagonistic, but the group of guardsmen saw the barrel vaguely pointed their way. That coupled with the death stare on Zeb's face made them not hesitate much longer, rushing over and grabbing the pump actions. Zeb didn't wait for them, knowing any second of delay sent another dozen men to meet the God Emperor. Reaching to his belt, he pulled out one of his krak grenades. Some might argue a frag was better against orks, and it was true the Krak was meant for anti-armor operations, but Zeb wanted to do the maximum amount of damage within a short blast radius, for the opportunity of Orks streaming in through the rampway of the shuttle.

"Move! Move!" He roared, shouldering through frightened troopers, shoving himself closer to the front.

"Sir, they're slaughtering us!" A blonde guardsmen cried, losing all dignity in his frightened state.

"For the Emperor!" Another screamed, hefting a lasgun above his peers, eyes wild.

"EMPEROR!" Zebulon roared, pulling the pin out of his grenade and pulling his hand back. A man was tossed into the air by an Ork's backhand, Zeb ducking under flailing limbs. Had he been struck, he might have been thrown to the ground and had the grenade detonate in the midst of them, but luckily Zeb had good reflexes. He lowered his head in a boxer's weave and then threw the krak grenade as far as he could. The heavy, handheld bomb arced through the air, spinning like an old terran football. Zeb watched as it hit an Ork on the head, the xenos showing a complete stupid bewilderment like a younger brother getting socked by an older one. It didn't have the time to be embarrassed or enraged. Less than a moment after it bounced off its thick skull, the krak grenade detonated.

A low, ear shattering 'thump' shot across the shuttle. Ork flesh incinerated and bones shattered, blowing the ones out of the blast radius onto their knees or on their backs. Very little shrapnel flew, but the concussive force was significant. The Orks went quiet just as the men had when the xenos had begun their bloody assault. The two sides seemed to be undecided as of what to do, and it was Zeb that broke the silence.

"Forward! Cut them down!" His voice rang, and the men at the front ran forward in a wave, the odd lasbolt flying into the disoriented Orks as the unarmed men picked up what choppas they could handle the weights of and charged with thew makeshift melee weapons. Zeb made it to the front, lasgun firing with a loud continuous 'crack' as he unleashed the full-auto of the weapon, the gun barrel barking as it singed green flesh and pierced Ork eyes and extremities. Two of the brutes regained their wits and stampeded toward Zeb, pig eyed and spittle flying from their frothing mouths. Zeb hefted his lasgun and obliterated one of the dreaded aliens, simultaneously cauterizing and puncturing their skull. The other was nearly on him, and he leaped back to get some room, but a thundering boom rent the air and blood splattered from the Ork's chest. It staggered but didn't go down. Two more shots were fired, crippling it by caving in its knee before the second ripped through its neck. Zeb turned and saw the group he had commandeered pump their shotguns and press forward. Another sergeant lead an assault on the left, flanked by three squadrons of guardsmen. Three men fell from shoota bullets, the large slugs shattering bones, one tearing through a man's skull until it was naught but a cave that drooled blood.

Every second, more men were armed and outfitted. The Orks that were still alive leaped at the guardsmen with wild abandon, taking out three men or more for every one of their number lost in such close quarters. But they were pushed back, more grenades being thrown into the bottleneck, shrapnel and explosive force tearing into the greenskin tide. Suddenly, multiple explosions rang out, the Orks crying out in fear as the 'thumps' grew louder and tore into their ranks from the outside. They exploded in a manner Zeb imagined a psyker would use, but there were none there he knew of. The men looked to one another confused, and all Zeb could guess was they had attempted to bring in grenadier orks themselves, but the explosives thrown from the guardsmen had detonated the leading booma orks and set a chain reaction down the line. The men were halted by shouting officers, letting the orks finish themselves off, firing at any survivors that got off the ground or stumbled in sight through the fog of debris.

The guardsmen took this time to order themselves, forming ranks and making sure no one's hands were without a weapon. Gingerly they marched forward, Zeb at the vanguard that stepped into the haze. He didn't know what to expect, but it did his heart well to hear the distant thumping of basilisk artillery gun batteries. There were slight tremors that accompanied the booms, making good on the name 'earthshakers.' Zeb heard a groan to his right, seeing an ork with muscled arms pushing itself off its face and shaking his head, before looking up at Zeb stupidly.

Zeb shouldered his lasgun and fired through the brute's mouth, tearing into its insides and ending its life. Even its eyes blistered from the intense heat of the lasbolt. It's body fell forward onto the dirt again, Zeb spitting on the corpse. Katia had an ancestral grudge against the xenos, but Zeb had firsthand experience that fueled his disgust for the beasts. The WAAAGH he campaigned against on Lorn V would forever be etched into his memories.

"Sir!" Zeb heard from his left. He turned and saw corporal Hagman. Finally, someone he recognized! It was weird for Hagman to call him sir, but in front of the other men...

"Report, Hag." He said.

"Du-retour should be less than a score of Kilometers to the northeast. If we hurry and don't run into another warband, we could make it there before nightfall."

Zeb nodded, satisfied at that if need be, but he still had the will to get there quicker somehow. He turned to the group of soldiers that had followed him. The shotgunners and a few squads of other guardsmen, every man looking his way or at the ground. He turned towards the smog that was now lifting, showing a lightly obscured countryside, well manicured and organized trees amongst rolling hills of rich farmland, now scarred and sliced by war. Even with the damage, it was grand to look upon. In the air, bright projectiles flitted across the cloudy sky as more shuttled floated from the heavens in the distant horizon. Even as he watched, another shuttle was burning, flying across the sky towards the planet like an asteroid.

"Everyone who wants to follow me, I'll be marching east to find some vehicles. I have a mission to get to Commissar Katia. Every man that wants to stay with the main body, leave now. Where I'm going, we won't get the support you'll need."

Not a man refused him. He didn't know why, but somehow, they wanted to follow him.

Kinda New

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The Sunday Group

Malcador hid his features well at Jaelle's comments, letting her blow off some steam before she zipped off to fulfill her duty. Often-times it seemed like he was just thorough with her, having a penchant for explaining matters to her and talking to her as if he hadn't mentioned the same thing a half a dozen times, and thoroughness was a part of it. But he felt a brotherly responsibility to her, and as quickly as she learned aspects about the modern world, there was always three things she still didn't know connected to what she did.

He stepped into the store, cellphone at his ear and sunglasses glinting in the reflected sunlight. He cleared his throat, nodding as he passed through the door as if he was listening in on a conversation. Overpriced beef jerky and processed food filled the layout of the store, and a few older folks, a man and a woman, spoke to one another until they noticed he had stepped in. He didn't even look their way, gazing into the back of the store as he conversed on the phone.

"Look, I don't care what they have to say. I want to speak to him, we need this done noon tomorrow. Have him call me back... Just do it." He turned the phone off and slid it into his pocket, turning to face the couple. They couldn't see which of them he was looking at, and he felt that worked for what he was trying to convey. "Hello, are you the Petersons?" When they looked at one another questioningly, he repeated the question.

Malcador could fill almost any role, because he had what an old friend used to call 'hollywood syndrome.' The american public was so used to watching movies with people who looked like supermodels, people who looked beautiful playing police, farmers, secret agents, etc. Most farmers did not look like a young Orlando Bloom, but he could play a farmer if cast. So if Malcador waltzed in wearing a suit and sunglasses with a no nonsense attitude, he had the look of a government official, and his movie-quality facial features subtly enhanced the role.

"We are, who are you?" The husband asked quickly, disrespectfully. Malcador took out his pen and a pad of notepaper with all the casual grace of a professional.

"I'm Agent Walter with the PIK working with the state police. Don't worry, no one's in trouble, but I wanted to ask you a few questions about a car collision that occurred yesterday about six miles from here. I was told you two spotted it, is that correct?" He asked, already writing down what looked like notes, but was actually a continuation of a stick figure, page-flipping animation he was working on.

"Yes, we did." The wife said before her husband could speak. "I apologize about Tom, he doesn't like city-folk." Mal could not help but smile, try as he might to hide it. "We drove by the car, we thought someone was drunk at the wheel. Then later we passed by it, crashed into the ditch. We called the police then."

"Why are you asking us this, wouldn't the police already have told you?" Tom asked suspiciously.

"Mr. Peterson, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about, please answer the questions and I'll get our of your hair. Now did you see who was in control of the vehicle? Male, female, black, white?"

"No, we did not." Tom remarked.

"I thought I saw two people in the car," his wife remarked.

"Excuse me, ma'am, what's your name?"

"Debbie. Debbie Peterson."

"Debbie, you say there were two?" Maclador pressed, finally writing down the notes. The erractic driving was one thing, but two passengers? "Any other details, ma'am?"

"No, I don't think so," she said slowly, thinking. As Mal finished scribbling on the pad, a car pulled up out front. He expected a pick-up truck, but it looked like a modified crown vic. Mal's skin began to crawl. He wasn't entirely sure, but only black magic or something similar would do that to him. When one practiced sorcery, anything wrong or at odds with it effected the caster like a prey animal suddenly aware of eyes on it.

"Mr. Peterson, do you have a licensed firearm behind that desk?" Malcador inquired, pointing with his pen past the counter. The man looked at his wife like Malcador was insane.

"What? Yeah, so what?"

You might need it, Mal thought to himself. He cleared his throat and began to categorize what spells he might be able to use to solve whatever situation was about to happen. Mal pressed the button on the back of his pen, a nifty signal to call for Jaelle. He hoped she was close enough to hear his mental shouts of warning.

Dungeoncrawl: I Want to be a Wizard!

Mostly been rolling behind the screen but since we're just chilling out right now

@POOHEAD189
@rocketrobie2
Y'all roll me 1d100 ;DDD

@Mae

I'm out of town on mobile so it was difficult to do it on the site, but I got an 81!

The Sunday Group

Malcador (and by extention Jaelle unless Liv says othereise) is now at the gas station and if our GM would like, I can have him start questioning the witnesses by week's end once I have returned from the my vacation. Or I can edit accordingly :)

The Sunday Group

"How long have we done this, Jaelle?" He asked her with a sardonic wit, unable to keep himself from examining the phantasmal image before him. Oddly enough, the message written on the corpse was now something entirely different than what he had initially read. Either it was meant for physical eyes only and he saw the true message, or it was something to merely throw them off. All he could tell was it was in a language he couldn't quite decipher, which was rare for him. He would look through his books later and see if he could get a grasp of the etchings, but for now he had to leave the mystery lying. "Don't you know I always have a plan?"

"The others will come back soon, but we'll go to them first." He explained, holding his hands out for patience at her curious look. "I know Sherlock Holmes was a bit after your time, but I thought you watched the Robert Downey Jr. one on Netflix a few weeks ago. We need to study every possible angle of this man's body to find out what was the cause of his demise. Though this is for later, mostly. Right now I merely wanted to make a get-away in case we needed it."

He stepped into his office and grabbed his personal grimoire, flipping open the pages to twelve seven, understanding suddenly sparkling in his mesmerizing eyes. It was a very small ritual, easy to complete as long as he had already made a mark at the desired location. Stepping back, he placed his body right under the doorframe to his office and gave a quick series of arcane syllables, intoned in a delectable, aqueous fashion from his silken voice.

A visible blur began to materialize in the doorframe, coming alive as soon as he stepped out of the doorway himself. Mal looked at his handiwork with a grin, grabbing his staff. In front of he and Jaelle was an image of the Gas Station Primrose had iterated the importance of. While Jaelle was in the staff, Mal had driven by the Gas Station and left a small arcane marker, connecting the location to wherever his destination would be, i.e. the office.

Placing his sunglasses back on, he tapped the staff twice. "You might want to hop back into the stone. There's no real telling how a spirit will fare going through an extrardimensional portal." Mal usually called it a 'Realm Spanning' portal, but Jaelle had grown quite fond of modern popular culture. The sci fi name for something that was fairly synonymous with his own meaning would probably grab her attention more.

Once she joined him, he held his breath and stepped through the doorway. For the briefest, smallest moment, he felt what the Aesir must have felt when traversing the nine realms of ygdrassil. Pure, insane chaos of unfathomable knowledge and physics men nor any physical being could ever conceptualize assailed his senses, burning into his every pore until he stepped lightly out into the shade behind the gas station. To someone new it would be an overwhelming experience, but to Mal it was like flossing. You didn't like it, but it wasn't too bad after a few times.

"You can come out, just don't be too tangible." He told her, turning the staff into a pen and placing it in his pocket.
@Atalanta

Dungeoncrawl: I Want to be a Wizard!

Malcador tapped his wand a bit as if that would rev whatever engine the magic might use, but of course that was useless. He sheathed the wand for the time being, making a note to figure out its idiosyncrasies for later. For now, he needed to open the door. The grinning skull did not deter someone of his mental fortitude. Plus it pissed him off.

Mal then went looking for any stick, sword (broken, weathered, or new), or anything he could find that could be used to pry open the door, and then he would attempt to do so.
@Mae