Deathwatch - Forge Master Mortis : Mission Reports - Part 2

I'll get the 2nd one of these out of the way and then I best get started on my iHoP article before Dethtron sends SinnSyn around with his Deathray and I'm forced to deploy the Night Reapers Chapter in order to defend my 'Fortress of Angriness'* from potential disintegration ;-)

*As 'Fortresses of Solitude' are for pussies and we all know that Anger is a Gift

Anyway,

Some of the information about this mission is mentioned in the previous part of this set of reports and can be found here. I'll do the mission report as a sort of narrative with a few notes in-between to explain some of the information from a rules/reasoning point of view for those interested in the more mechanical aspects of Deathwatch games.

Brother Mortis - Personal Log - f4g67hg67htf67

The Ork 'Rok' class transport vessel has apparently changed course and is now heading towards a Shrine World that was previously considered to be off it's calculated course. The Watch Fortress Captain has prepared two volleys of weaponry of the 'Planet Killer' power level from the fortresses weapon batteries. Unfortunately due to it's current unpredictable course it has been deemed necessary for a Kill-Team to be sent to intercept it should these weapons fail to bring about it's neutralisation. As this could potentially turn into a 'cleanse' mission Epsilon has been selected due to our proven track record in the field of mass pacification and our considerable experience in the destruction of Orks. We have equipped ourselves with appropriate equipment in anticipation of the task. An Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos and his retinue are to join us on this mission for reasons that were (as usual) never adequately explained.....

Editors Note - Actually our GM was trying out some Dark Heresy rules and another of our friends was using a human assassin character that needed testing out. Of course Forge Master Mortis didn't know that, lol.

Brother Mortis - Personal Log - 9ks47dn46j55n6

Typical....The first volley missed the Rok by a considerable margin, yet the secondary volley has destroyed it utterly when we were less than an hour away from reaching it. We are now armed for the task of destroying Orks with the next closest threat being a Daemon World for which we are laughably ill equipped......

Editors Note - After careful consideration we had decided to have a 'pot shot' at the Rok with the Fortresses weapons without believing for a moment that our GM would allow the task to be accomplished so easily. Unfortunately he deemed us having to assault a Daemon world with bugger all appropriate equipment to be fucking hilarious though he assures us that it was a random chance of success that he just happened to roll for..... For those of you who don't play RPG's, I'll just say that unlikely events that screw over players that GM's claim were randomly rolled for are so common that a few of us are beginning to get justifiably suspicious.....


Conveniently the Shrine World we had saved had some useful equipment and allies on it.....I'm loath to mention unlikely coincidences again, but you've got to be sharing our suspicions by now.....

Brother Mortis - Personal Log - 38vnr67fhs8rnty4

Praise the Omnissiah. The Shrine World that we have just saved has a considerable compliment of Adeptus Sororitas stationed upon it. If any group has the equipment required to deal with such a threat as Daemons then the Sisters are second only to the Grey Knights in that regard.

We have equipped ourselves with a quantity of Witch Bolts for our weapons and have had our primary close combat weaponry ritually blessed** by the Sisters. A quantity of the Sororitas have expressed their wish to join us on this mission as have a compliment of the local militia. All told over a hundred Sisters and close to 40 Militia members are to accompany us to the recently corrupted world...fortunately they have their own transports.

** And we didn't need to kill any of them and smear ourselves in their blood to do it either......

Editors Note - Getting a weapon or armour with the 'Sanctified' type is next to impossible in Deathwatch as virtually none of them have it as standard (there's only one I think)  and there's no way of gaining it via weapon upgrades. Our GM allowed us to have a single close combat weapon each 'blessed' by the sisters for 10 requisition though any equipment deemed rare or 'Deathwatch only' was considered unavailable which is only fair considering we were two days travel from our base of operations. Rather more fortunately our GM considered 'Witch Bolts' to be something that the Sisters would have in large quantity but that 'large' quantity turned out rather conveniently to be exactly three clips each for our primary ranged weapons.....

Brother Mortis - Personal Log - m85g587cn8777

The planet is shrouded in an unnatural blueish glow though it is centred on what was according to our records the Governors Palace. We have decided that an area near a large forest should enable us to approach the apparent centre of Daemonic activity under some measure of cover. Immediately upon landing we organised the troops at our disposal and then advanced through the forest towards a pyramidal structure of translucent blue that had once been an Imperial City but now resembled nothing like any of us had ever encountered.

The trees (if indeed that was what they had previously been) were twisted into unnatural forms that more closely resembled those of mutated creatures than the Flora that they now obscenely parodied. Disturbingly there appeared to be movement all around us yet no matter where we looked or scanned that movement was always just out of sight. Such distractions were of little consequence to the Astartes though several of our allies seemed constantly on the verge of panic. Rather unfortunately their suspicions about our surroundings were about to be violently confirmed.....

Without warning the 'trees' seemed to explode into life wrapping themselves around any of our allies that happened to be in range. While they were attempting to free themselves an explosion of light appeared at several points around us from which strange creatures appeared which were identified to us by our accompanying Inquisitor with a single shouted word.....Horrors.....

Leaving these attempting to free themselves to their own devices those able to bring weapons to bear did so with devastating effect***

*** Holding onto a Forge Master who weighs about three Metric Tonnes and has a Thunderhammer, Two Servo Arms, A Flamer, a Plasma Pistol and a Breaching Auger is rather usefully beyond the ability of most Daemoniacally possessed trees, lol.

Editors Note - Given the amount of female allies we had I was pleasantly surprised though at the same time vaguely disappointed that our GM didn't decide to re-enact that scene from Evil Dead with any of them. At least it went some way to confirming that it wasn't a world dedicated to Slaanesh...It was also a chance for our new Librarian (who's name was Panthro.....no, I'm not kidding) to again ruin a carefully crafted suspenseful battle to the death by utilising an area effect power of monstrous damage levels known as 'Wave of Penance'.

Reaching into the ether Brother Librarian Panthro**** of the Thunder Tigers**** Chapter drew forth the accumulated pain of 10,000 years worth of Penance and tore apart almost all of the our foes though several groups of the Pink Horrors appeared to be replaced by more malicious and numerous replacements in a rather unpleasant shade of blue...

**** Yes....I know......

These new foes were however easily despatched by the combined fire-power of the Kill-Team and it's allied forces.....

Though the Kill-Team itself was relatively unscathed our accompanying forces had suffered horrific casualties from the coruscating warp flames that had exploded amongst them...gathering the survivors back into some semblance of a battle formation we continued our advance towards the city.

Editors Note - 'Wave of Penance' is an Imperial Fist only psychic power that does 1d10 x PR (Psy Rating) of explosive damage with a range of 10m x PR. There is also a Rank 1 Talent called 'Rite of Sanctioning' that allows you to pick a result on the psychic phenomena and substitute it for any result (other than a Perils of the warp) that you get when you roll on that aforementioned table. To all intents and purposes this means that a Librarian can use a power at the 'Push' level and have a 75% chance of avoiding a nasty result. Our GM is extremely unhappy about this particular combo given it's potential damage output from even a below average roll, lol.

The city was surrounded by a wall of the same blue crystal that seemed to be the basis for every structure we could see. After several pointless attempts by our Jump Pack equipped Apothecary to get himself killed by leaping into the air and getting shot at by a defence tower of some description within, I sliced a sufficiently spacious aperture in the outermost structure with a combination of my Breaching Augur and Plasma Cutter to enable us to enter the outer reaches of the Daemon tainted structures. The defence towers seemed entirely geared towards the destruction of airborne intruders and gave us no further trouble though their innate presence caused our Librarians considerable discomfort.

Via the use of Auspex scans we located a barracks-like building that contained the unmistakable energy signatures of Astartes Power Armour. the Inquisitorial assassin investigated the structure through a window of sorts in the roof and confirmed that it contained nearly thirty Power Armoured figures, a small creature who appeared to be working on several other suits of armour and at least two beings that were almost certainly Sorcerers.....

Knowing that we would soon be discovered I prepared to destroy the building with explosives in order to cause as much damage as possible to these enemies of the Imperium before they could retaliate. Unfortunately the Sorcerer managed to erect a shield of Psychic energy that protected him and his comrade though the creature and the armour it was working on were crushed in the buildings collapse. Knowing we had little time to lose we opened fire on these traitors before the animated suits of armour they controlled could emerge from the rubble to engage us. 

The fire-fight was an intense exchange of warp spawned energy and sacred Bolter fire as we desperately attempted to finish off the masters before their servants could overwhelm us. My own weapons and that of my servitor caused incredible amounts of damage to the traitor Marines before a new arrival caused me to alter my target priority considerably.....

Editors Note - Blowing up the building would have been a genius idea if it wasn't for the fact that our GM's dice rolls for the damage caused were very low indeed...Fortunately if there's one thing kill-team epsilon does well it's killing shit real good ;-)

I'm afraid I'm going to drag this out to a part three. You'll have to wait till Wednesday for that though as I have an iHoP post and an Eye-Candy post to do in the meantime and a few e-mails to crowbar in after that...At this rate I'll be taking pictures of next years throne of Skulls before I've published all the ones from this year, lol.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.