Deathwatch - Space Hulk Recon Mission - Part 1

For those of you who e-mailed me asking for me to do more about our Deathwatch sessions then I'll try to do a bit of narrative about them after each session (usually Saturdays) but I'll need to start making notes as I go along if I have to make them accurate as well as interesting, lol. I'll also attempt a brief overview of the game system for the girl who asked about it via another e-mail but that will have to be next week now.

Space Hulk Recon Mission - Part 1
Brother Mortis stood at the back of the briefing room and awaited the details of their next mission. Though the seating in the room was designed with Space Marine dimensions in mind his mechanical systems meant that he himself outweighed the average Marine by a significant margin so he had refrained from utilising them.

The briefing started with the usual analysis of a dozen Xenos threats that were making themselves known across the sector. The Tau had consolidated themselves on several contested worlds, Tyranids were still infesting several worlds despite the Xenophage Virus his own team had introduced to their Primary Hive Ship weakening them considerably and the usual Chaos cults were appearing almost as fast as they were being exterminated by Imperial authorities(1). However all these potential threats were now de-prioritised in favour of a Space Hulk that had been spat from the warp dangerously close to their current position.

The Hulk in question had appeared several times over the millennia but had never been boarded by agents of the Imperium (to the Deathwatches  knowledge at least). The mission was simple, Recon the vessel as thoroughly as possible and withdraw should any significant threat be encountered. A Strike Cruiser was allocated to get the team close to the monstrosity before the team was inserted into the vessel via Thunderhawk.

The Deathwatch command appeared to be taking no chances with the safety of the Cruiser either as a significant number of kill-teams were aboard as well as several Keepers and a wide variety of support personnel. The team had equipped themselves from the armoury before leaving the station and had been allowed access to far superior equipment than was normally allocated to them.

Mortis himself had taken a sacred symbol of the favour of the Machine God in the form of an Astartes Omnissiah Axe and several others carried ancient Combi-Weapons of various descriptions. Brother Marcus had taken a Plasma Cannon in place of his usual Heavy Bolter, such a weapon was deadly in the hands of any Marine but was considerably more dangerous in the hands of a Devastator with the unerring accuracy shown consistently by Brother Marcus. Before the mission began the teams Librarian, Brother Claton utilised the Emperors Tarot(2) to glean some basic information about the vessel and as a result was nominated team leader for this particular endeavour.

Mortis plugged his Mind Impulse Unit into the console and awaited the sacred flow of machine code directly into his own cogitator circuits, The sensation was not unpleasant as he interfaced easily into the co-pilot controls of the Thunderhawk and ran the usual checks on all the vehicles secondary weapon systems. Meanwhile Brother Marcus settled himself into the Pilot seat and went through his own set of rituals. Though his primary role in the kill-team was as heavy weapon support he was also a trained as a pilot(3) and often flew the team to their destinations in the same way that Brother Mortis himself usually took over driving duties on the occasions that vehicle support was authorised on missions. Many other teams used supplemental staff for such duties but Kill-Team Epsilon prided itself on being a completely self reliant unit...not to mention the fact that they had a certain reputation for destruction and mayhem that meant that volunteers for such duties were understandably few and far between(4)...

As the Thunderhawk got closer to the monstrous vessel it became obvious that it consisted of the carcasses of literally hundreds of space going vessels only a few of which were Imperial in origin. Fortunately one of the starships haphazardly embedded in the outer sections of the hulk had once been in the service of mankind and seemed to have three intact landing bays of sufficient size. As there seemed little to choose between them our pilot simply headed for the one in the centre....

Continued in Part 2 ;-)

(1) I think our GM was trying to keep the nature of our opposition in the upcoming mission a bit of a surprise which was somewhat ruined by our team Librarians Augury power, lol.

(2) There's a Librarian ability that basically allows you a glimpse of the future which in game terms translates as certain information about the upcoming mission. Brother Claton's roll on the table meant that our GM had to tell us the most dangerous opposition that we would face and five other forces which then turned out to be a shit-load of Orks, lol.

(3) Once your BS is high enough and you've took the basic 'do more damage' and 'don't miss' upgrades there's usually enough XP left over for a Devastator to get himself a secondary role and it also makes the RPG elements a bit more fun for that player.

(4) Guest appearances in our missions by NPC's are usually fatally brief with the exception of Vetrov Vetrovski (our liaison officer from the 'Pilgrims loss' campaign who seemed to be fucking immune to all danger no matter what the circumstance and who's accent seemed to change from Russian to Italian and back again sometimes during a single sentence.....)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.