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Age Of Sigmar Interlude

There’s a contest on:  Visit the Age of Warhammer Blog and use their city generator to create a city. Deadline is Friday at midnight GMT so best hurry if you want to enter! Here’s my entry!

Mystport
The floating town of Mystport is famed for it’s Gunnery School, drawing applications from not just Duardin, but many of the forces of Order, and even a few others, though it is rare for anyone from any of the other Grand Alliances to be allowed enrollment. When they are it is generally due to a wealthy family making massive donations; the clan of Barak-Orirrak is as greedy as the next Kharadron clan, and it’s no surprise that for sufficient remuneration, and proper insurance almost anyone will be allowed to enroll.

Nigh on a decade ago a Realmgate opened in the vaults below the town, however it quickly became apparent that on the other side of the gate was only despair; no expeditions returned, and shortly after the last one, Daemons began to start coming through. After a hard fought battle that raged throughout the vaults and catacombs the Daemons were defeated and the Endrinriggers managed to build a containment vessel around the gate, leaving the gate quiescent for the most part. It still hums and sings a miasmic tune which plagues the dreams of the residents of Mystport. Many civilians have fled, but those who’ve stayed profit greatly.

To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to despair

Dael’s Adventure Part 7

Start from the beginning

And yet again Honch’s military training is counting well for us. Entering the barracks, he conducted a surprise inspection, keeping the two guards busy while Solei and I snuck into the laundry room and liberated some uniforms. Mostly they fit, though since Solei was the one to smuggle everything out her uniform was hilariously voluminous after departed and distributed the uniforms to the rest of the party. I feel like we all looked quite fetching in military uniform.

Next we arrived at the armory, but it turns our out clever disguises were for not, for some massive mastiff hounds were guarding the entrance. Honch attempted to bribe them with food, but apparently they were too well trained, and so Vyrez bopped one on the head. With little other option we quickly entered a scrum with the devilish dogs who upon expiration discorporated in fantastic and disquieting manners. The first turning into a goo and then growing into animated grass. Whilst we were fighting Solei used some mystical trickery to appear inside the gate but failed to pick the lock, following which Hubert tossed acid on it and Solei used a cannon to ram the weakened door open. Once we had finished the second dog it exanded and the shrank, fluttering around and making a shrieking farting noise like a pierced balloon. Hubert and Mortia raided the armory whilst Honch gathered up the requisite materiel to operate the cannon.

Once we headed into the prison proper looking for the Diviner Honch figured out that the feeling of dread was actively trying to keep us away. The less we wanted to go a direction, the more likely it was the right way and with his direction it wasn’t long before we found ourselves in an amphitheater like room designed as a fighting pit. Here stood Despair as well as three of her minions.

They used all manner of magical and psychological tricks to make us despondent and unwilling to fight, but we managed to hold it together, encouraging each other and fighting off their malicious malaise long enough to best them in combat. The destruction of the Diviner resulted in weirdly pulsing, expanding and contracting shadow ball that finally expanded to encompass the entire arena faster than any of us could react. However it’s wake left a temporary area of invigorating tranquility, allowing us a chance to rest and recuperate.

 

Let’s Play Tropic 4: XIV

December ’59

Our cigar factory is finally finished, however the workers are threatening to strike unless more entertainment is provided. To that end a Cosmic Pin (basically a restaurant on a super tall tower) has been planned, however I accidentally signed the papers giving the go ahead before talking to the budget committee and now we are in the red again. Downtown is really shaping up, and would be quite nice if we could get everyone out of shacks and into the nice new apartment buildings we’ve built for them.

 

January ’60

Congratulations to me, I won the election, and by a landslide! No, there wasn’t an actual landslide, but the final tally was 105 to 27 in my favor! And Penultimo was worried that I should try and influence the vote.

 

August ’60

Our space needle … ahem, Cosmic Pin is done. What a glorious monument, though we’ll definitely have to improve housing conditions, that shack filled slum is totally visible every time the view swings around.

 

Jaunary ’61

The middle school is finished, and highschool is nearing completion. The next generation of islanders will have an education and we will be able to stop hiring foreigners for our more complex jobs.

 

Meet the Cultist 15: Pargebus Gallek

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Pargebus fancies himself a “special operative” wielding a brace of custom autopistols and finding any excuse he can to use his precious night-vision goggles. And while he is quite stealthy, his skills are as frequently put to use liberating alcohol and excess loot from other squads as they are employed during real battles and raid. That said his enthusiasm is well enough known that he is often “volunteered” for otherwise undesired tasks simply by adding some element of stealth or unusual entry to the mission.

Pargebus likes collecting bugs, especially esoteric xenos specimens. He has a small travel case with a killing jar, and a kit so he can bring any rarities he discovers back after the raid, to add to his fairly extensive collection. His biggest frustration is when the band is campaigning near the Eye of Terror or in warp tainted space and seemingly exotic bugs he’s caught become mundane (or worse disappear entirely) once they’ve left the influence of the warp behind. He’s commissioned Moebius to make him a warp consecrated storage container, but neither attempts have worked and in this regard Pargebus has remained frustrated.

A few of the other cultists laugh behind his back at Pargebus’s ridiculous pouffy sleeves, but as they are all that’s left of his lucky shirt Pargebus doesn’t care. Ultimately most of the other cultists don’t care as fashion is generally considered in the eye of the beholder.

Basingstock has such lovely sewers

Dael’s Adventure Part 6

Start from the beginning

As we made our way to the tenement district Hubert explained a bit about Night Hags to us. Apparently they are super powerful dream creatures that consume the life force of people through a straw. Enroute we got into a bit of a discussion about whether to take the main streets or a more direct route through smaller streets. As we traveled through the apartment district several of the Basingstock natives commented that the area seemed shadier than usual, with a certain menace to it not normally found. This grew even worse once we reached the tenements. There was a river that looked to be full of crocodiles or worse, but it didn’t take too long to figure out that we the likely place for a Night Hag would be under the district in sewers or catacombs.

There weren’t any big signs saying “Sewer Entrance Here” so I suggest the possibility of smuggling tunnels leading out from the basement of a bar. Ultimately this was mainly an excuse so that Solei and I could liberate some top shelf whiskey, and whilst we were doing so Vyrez found us our secret entrance into the sewers. Once down there I was the first to hear it, but it wasn’t long before others did as well, an ominous, nay creepy, echoing laughter, as if from a child coming first from one tunnel, then another. Moments later we were ambushed by more of the exploding ninjas. I spent much of the battle flailing ineffectually, mostly because I never did pay much attention to the blind fighting lessons and I was closing my eyes each time I threw a punch to try and avoid getting blinded again.  Though on the bright side, my blind drunk defensive technique was actually pretty effective at avoiding their blows in return.

Once we had defeated them, a bit more wandering in the sewers eventually led us to a weird portal, and we found the Night Hag. Apparently she was limited to sucking up a single soul per night, so was tired and sullen. We explained the situation to her, and she suggested that probably the Diviners were anchoring the city in the dreaming, and if we could defeat them we could restore the regular cycle of day and night. She agreed to help us locate where they were likely holed up, I think largely to get us to shut up. After climbing to the top of a temple she suggested our likeliest targets were the Clock Tower (which we kind of already knew) the Park, the Red Light District, the Lord’s Keep and the Garrison.

We decided to attempt the Garrison District first, Hubert was brash and used acid to burn a hole in the iron fence, and when we were confronted by a guard, Honch used military discipline to tell of the guard. Once inside we decided to attempt to disguise ourselves as soldiers while we searched for the Oneironaught responsible.

Let’s Play Tropic 4: XIII

September ’58

Things have been very busy, and yet, kind of boring at the same time. Construction is finished on a hotel so that tourists will have a place to stay. Downtown keeps growing, with plans far outstripping the capabilities of the construction crews. The police station is finished, if unstaffed, one and a half of the 3 new apartment buildings have gone up, and foundation for a shopping mall has been laid. Meanwhile in the harbor district basically no progress has been made on the Cigar Factory, Furniture Factory or Rum Distillery. Unfortunately we don’t have the funds left over after planning all of this to bribe the works to rush build anything.

January ’59

The lack of natural resources on this island has obviously affected my constituent’s pride. The current prediction for the upcoming election breaks down the votes at about 84 for me and 61 for my rival Ciriaco Vega. Surely a rousing speech and some stirring campaign promises will bring the populace around. Plus that shopping mall should be done any day now, which should greatly distract them from whatever woes they may have.

February ’59

A tsunami hit, damaging a few buildings, and stranding an oil tanker deep in uninhibited territory, fortunately no one of consequence was injured or killed and rebuilding only cost a couple of grand. Already scaffolding has gone up to dismantle this huge ship.

MtC 14: Talon Ogar

If there is anyone in Khaslillie and Rheatrivix’s Awesome Fucking Band who shouldn’t be allowed to carry  a gun most members would probably suggest Talon Ogar should be so restricted. While his boon has left him without eyes, his entire skin has become so sensitive to vibration that he uses his bell for what basically amounts to echo location. Amidst the din of battle only those with the keenest hearing, possibly enhanced by exotic narcotics, and those standing directly beside Talon can even hear it’s ringing, but it doesn’t seem to prevent him from firing on targets. Unfortunately his accuracy was never the best, even when he had eyes, but all told he’s still good enough at distinguishing targets that he’s barely killed anyone worth mentioning via friendly fire.

Talon was tasked (along with a couple of dozen other cultists) to do a space walk during one raid when one of Khaslillie’s Battlecruisers found a derelict hulk and there wasn’t a Kharybdis available for the boarding action. The silence of the vacuum of space apparently didn’t sit well, and almost everyone else was forced to mute comms to silence his inhuman screams. There were of course exceptions, being a Slaaneshii cult, several members turned their volume up all of the way, and Tudax managed to snag a recording of it which he has since resampled into several hilarious and catchy songs such as “I can hear the stars, make them shut up”, “Please Don’t Stop Talking” and “I don’t want no part of this, send me back”.

Talon’s sense of smell and taste has also been magnified, and during downtime he uses this newfound talent to do a bit of chemical experimentation. Some of his more successful batches have even been passed up the chain to the Noise Marines. Talon hopes someday to make an impressive enough batch that they’ll allow him to participate in one of their gigs, though of course he’ll probably have to come up with a much more impressive instrument than a bell to have a chance.

This model wouldn’t hold up to the “50% GW” rule. The head, bell and backpack are all GW but that’s only about a third of the mini, the rest being Target. That said, I love the idea of Slaanesh (and the other Ruinous Powers for that matter) granting boons that don’t really aide in battle, and possibly are a hindrance, but help them in some way during “every day life” … It’s not really focused on by GW, but realistically (hah) not every moment is spent in war.

Maybe the zombie works here? Oh, you already killed it.

Dael’s Adventure Part 5

Start from the beginning

With the location of our new headquarters picked out, Cilla began setting it up while Team Intern went to investigate the Temple  of Pharasma. I really should have paid more attention during religious studies, though to be fair the Order never really put too much effort into explaining the gods, but Master Thevarada always said worship was a personal affair, that it was tangential to the pursuit of appreciation. Regardless, if I had spent a bit more time I might have realized that since Pharasma is the goddess of death, it would be the obvious place to look for information about a corpse! Plus apparently the Necromancer Sammael was friends with the Medical Examiner who worked there. Boy, a city sure is complicated. Though I have read several logs of initiates who went to Hornshroud, it all seemed to make much more sense; I wonder how much of this weirdness is due to the whole waking dream situation? I kind of feel like not so much since none of the others seem particularly bothered by any of this.

The Temple, once we arrived and went inside seems awfully decrepit but we perservered, splitting into two groups this time, with Solei, Hubert and I heading to the administrative rooms to look for records, whilst the others headed down to the morgue in case the Medical Examiner was there. Spoilers, she totally was, and I heard later from Honch that she had a weird zone of music that was so loud it was physically painful, but was limited in area. I really wish I’d gone with that group as that sounds amazingly unusual, and much more interesting than looking through records, a thing I was basically no help with. My boredom did end up working out for us as I spotted the first zombie well before it got to us. I closed the door whilst we discussed what to do, then I opened the door and again and Solei made short work of the foul creature slicing off it’s arm and head almost before Hubert could even ask what was going on.

Shortly after the rest of the group returned with the Medical examiner, I think her name was Abbae; She looked weird: pale and washed out as if seen at dusk, yet that may have just been an illusion caused by the fact that everything else around her was not just thrown in stark relief, but appeared more real, and also more clean and upkept, almost as if she was providing window into the waking world. She seemed to have a better grasp of the filing system and agreed to help us look, which is when I again noticed more zombies. It was a good thing we’d regrouped, as there were a lot more of them, and I’ll admit this was one of my least favorite brawls I’ve ever been in. Half the time when I punched or kicked one of them, rather than sending them sprawling my fist or foot would end up going into them and come out covered in rotting bits.

We had almost finished off the putrescent corpses when there was a great crash and a huge skeleton, that looked like it was an agglomeration of man and bison smashed through the wall into the main admin chamber. It was then that I had what might have been a tremendously foolhardy idea, but I went over to try and get a closer look, as I’d never seen anything like it before. It was far too big to fit through the door so I might have taunted it a bit, as at that time I hadn’t realized it had already smashed through one wall. When it rushed forwards to try and gore me I dodged to the side, thinking it would smack the wall and  the rest of the interns would come to my aide, but things didn’t play out that way at all… for starters several of the zombies had some sort of paralytic effect, stunning both Honch and Vyrez making it so they could barely walk meanwhile the Skeletal Minotaur’s charge missed me but destroyed the wall. Vyrez called out some sort of challenge to the beast, which it seemed inclined to accept, except that it couldn’t figure out how to get around me. At this point it occurred to me to try the Fist of Cracking Boulders technique which is well known to break ribs in normal people so I rarely have used it outside of practice, but this thing was basically all ribs! And low it was effective, every punch I threw cracked and shattered ribs, and emboldened by efforts Vyrez and Honch joined battle drawing it’s attention off of me. There was also some mystical light of some kind which I assumed was manifested at the behest of Mortia, as I’d seen her create a similar attack against the Ebonbiter thugs.

Anyways, we were able to defeat the undead hordes, and it wasn’t too long afterwards that Abbae found the information we needed. Or rather, that what we sought was basically unattainable as Sammael had pretty much split the corpse up into pieces and sold them to a variety of customers across the land. After a bit of discussion, and some more investigation by the more bureaucratically inclined a new plan was hatched, go to the tenements district (where there might be a living night hag) and (this is the part I’m not super clear on, I was kind of busy cleaning the gore off of myself) either killing it and presenting it to the diviners, or convincing it to help us break the spell on the city and have us all wake up.

Let’s Play Tropic 4: XII

March ’56

We’ve got our first Rebel, Aloise Rios! I guess we didn’t get the church built fast enough for her.

June ’56

Keith Preston, the American Investor who helped set me up here, has sprung his trap, and I need to export at least a hundred grand in the next 8 years or he’ll be able to take over operations on the island. I guess it’s time to fire my lawyer and ramp up the export business.

October ’56

This island doesn’t have a lot of natural resources, but there are some trees. So let’s cut them down, and make furniture. Genuine bespoke hand crafted by natives, artisanal  antique furniture. I’m sure the americans will eat it up. The last shipment brought in $60k, however I’ve already spent forty of that, and it’ll be many months before the next cargo ships come, I’m going to try and keep the treasury over 10k so we can get a faster turnaround on the ships when they do arrive.

Feb ’57

In addition to the new logging camp, we’ve spent a bit extra to refurbish an old colonial fort as a tourist trap. Tourism is definitely a secondary concern, but hopefully it can get us a little be more cashflow. It would be nice to only be losing a little money every money while we wait for the next cargo freighter to arrive.

June ’57

Rumours of a Pirate convention on a nearby island have been surfacing. The next time we get an export payout we’ll have to build a rum distillery and start making rum to sell them.

Mtc 13: Pugar Arreon

Pugar “The Magician” Arreon claims his big brother is a Warp Talon and that’s where he got the awesome helmet and chainsword; while the claim is patently ridiculous the sword is basically brand new … there’s no Nurgle rot, Tzeentchian sigils, and not nearly enough blood to have been looted from Khornish marines. Exactly how Pugar acquired is unclear.

In the revelry after a particularly successful battle another cultists, Cruga tried to insult Pugar by calling him a lumberjack, and Pugar responded by sawing him in half and then proclaiming that he couldn’t put Cruga back together so he was apparently a pretty piss poor magician. This struck a cord with the rest of the cult, and now there are usually raucous calls to “Show us a magic trick” from everyone else in his squad when they charge into battle.

Pugar has the distinction of having one of the few Chaos amulets not made by Moebius, though he’s not clear on the origins since it was attached when “his brother gave it to him.”

The sword and helmet are indeed spares from the Warp Talon/Lightning Claws kit. The pistol is actually from a Kharadron Overlord kit (aka fantasy sky dwarves).