The Joke Is On Us

Wow – Xicarph is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen! I swear almost every building is made of marble – one more lovely than the next. Just to top it off the climate is excellent, perfect temperature at all times. The air is just right, not like home – like breathing in death and decay, and not eerily clean and moist like in the wilderness *shudder*.

Quaddis was discovered by Solomon Haarlock, and somehow escaped government by the God Emperor. It is a sanctuary for the nobles. Solomon did some clever wheeling and dealing, giving away lots of the land on Quaddis, but managing to maintain the only city and spaceport in his own feafdom. Xicarph is supposed to be ruled by a Haarlock, but since they are scarce someone else is ruling in absentia. Lots of new terms with these learned mates of mine. Can’t remember the dudes name, though, makes no difference to me.

Oh well, time to get out of these awful clothes. The sight of them bring back strange memories, nightmares… Laz asks a local where the inns and shops are. He takes a look at us and suggests the Collapsed Palaces. Laz gets the point across that looks can be deceiving, and gets new directions to the Guild Enclave. 

Following the latter instructions, we head south and come upon a massive wall. Behind it elaborate spires are visible. It takes me a second to realize this wall is not the wall to an area of town, but to a single estate – Holder-Smith suggests the Haarlock’s.

We find the shops and stock up on the basic stuff, guns, more guns and some bladed stuff. We also invest in some crazy expensive clothes. Booyah! My old gang should see me now. They would laugh their heads off – and I would shoot them in the face.

Following up on our only lead we go to the university quarters to try to locate the White Scholar. We got a fair enough description of him, and stumble upon someone who knows him soon enough. Unfortunately the guy’s gone underground. Can’t really blame him. The university guy refers us to lector Manu, says he knows where Dexter might be. Lector Manu seems skittish and won’t tell us much, but we get the drift and tell him to tell Dexter that we’re at this inn, etc.

So we play the waiting game, and it doesn’t take long before a messenger finds us with a note. It says to meet him at a place in the Adept district.

On the way there, we feel like the heron-masked is here, then there, several times. We chase after, but can’t track him down. Taking precautions, we head towards the meeting place, it turns out to be a student theater. It seems quiet, and we take our time checking for traps as we enter. Potter senses a single presence, and sure enough it’s Septimus Dexter. He fills us in quickly.

He and Inquisitor Karkalla were tasked with checking out the Beast House gang. In the process of this they got ambushed by the Pilgrims of Hayte, he describes them as a murder cult. Apocalyptic nutjobs intent on destroying humanity. They are lead locally by sorcerers, and are generally erratic. The ambush, which included demons!, was lead by a figure in a heron mask. When Karkalla understood the gravity of the situation he commanded Dexter to flee. Someone had to report this to the authorities.

So – what the hell happened? The heron-masked might have played the Beast House, who according to Dexter is “nothing compared to the Pilgrims of Hayte”. Dexter says he and Karkalla didn’t even know the Pilgrims were on Quaddis. The Beast House are in the slavery business, and operate around the sector. They have lists of wanted slaves, Dexter informs us. I presume this might have something to do with the descendants of Haarlock again. Something in the blood. Or maybe I’m turning paranoid… We show the Scholar the note the Heron-masked left us. ‘Hmmm’ he says, the Widower is a known myth on Quaddis. It refers to a monster who kills people, looking for the old blood. No shit… There have been strange murders in Xicarph lately, people left with their entrails hung up on display, and that sort of stuff. But there is no one to investigate, the families take care of business themselves. Septimus Dexter says that he thinks the heron-masked is a false prophet. An evil wizard with grand plans. He goes on to say that he will continue to research the matter, and that we might find help in a female called the Spider Bride. She is an oracle of sorts, who resides in the Akasen Follies, the red light district. ‘Is she human?’ we ask. Dexter shrugs, he doesn’t know. Suddenly we see forms approaching us from the shadows.

The heron-masked! No, wait, another?! And a third..? What the hell - there are five of them! They remove the masks, and reveal hideous faces. Riddled with cuts, and all flaunting that sick joker smile. ‘Forgive our master’s gest, but it is time for the pawns on the regicide board to play their parts. Now give us the old man, and you can go back to the dance.’  

Like hell! We draw weapons and engage immediately. Sadly Dexter falls almost at once, and we must focus on taking down the opponents. We fight like you would against an apocalyptic murder cult – like your life depends on it. We take them down with inspired shooting and swordsmanship – the God Emperor smiles on those who do good.

As a respect to the late Septimus Dexter whe get him cremated. 

Out of the dark

After relieving the unfortunate chap of his meager possessions (a stub revolver I believe), we head back into the main room. We have little idea of where any exit might be, so we continue with our grand plan of following the right wall. Lazarus spots some tracks, probably a large mammalian quadruped of the canis species. Given our lack of armaments that might be troublesome.

We walk for a further 20 minutes before coming face to face with a set of gigantic double doors, probably 15 meters or more in height. There's a lever mechanism we assume will open the doors, but for the nonce we decide to leave them well alone, given that several more animal and human tracks go through them.

After another 5 minutes, we come upon a normal-sized door and enter it. There's a staircase inside, at the bottom we find a corpse and the words "help me" scribbled in (presumably his own) blood on the wall. Helpfully, the corpse possesses a stub revolver with 2 clips as well as a fragment grenade. Me and Mr Potter share the bullets while he takes the gun, leaving only Lazarus without a ranged weapon. Excepting Dar of course!

We enter the door at the bottom of the stairs, and another gigantic room spreads out before us. A few of us spot a large flying xeno of some sort diving down towards us, clearly intent on, well, killing us. I take careful aim with my gigantic pistol, fire and manage to hit the thing square between the eyes, killing it instantly. Frustratingly, I am unable to identify the beast. And to think I don't have my pict recorder! Most annoying.

We go back up and find another door after a short while. Inside there's a rank smell of meat, as well as two men chatting and smoking lho sticks some 20 meters ahead of us. In the dark they don't spot us. One of them has an animal mask, both are wearing leather aprons. After 5 minutes they go into the same room. The room opposite turns out to be a storage room. We pick up some tools, lights and the sort. Unfortunately there is no water or food - and we are on the verge of becoming seriously dehydrated.

Because of this, we chance looking into the room the two cultists (I assume, or maybe they just have a very strange fashion sense) entered. The room is fairly large, stretching into darkness. Cells line the walls, containing both beasts, xenos and men. Around 20 meters ahead, 4 chaps are struggling to get a xeno into what looks like an elevator. And most importantly - around 10 meters ahead, there's a big tray filled to the brim with disgusting yet glorious-looking water!

We hurriedly concoct a plan. We will shoot one of the cultists, hopefully setting the beast free which will then take care of the rest while we deal with whoever is still standing. I manage to get another bullseye with the monster gun, and the beast starts casually (or so I like to think) eating the face of one of the slavers-turned-meal. It ends up killing two of the men while the last one runs. Me and Dar run after him, being the cardio enthusiasts in the group, while the rest finish off the wounded xeno.

Unfortunately, ahead there are another 3 cultists, and these look like guards of some sort, armed with shotguns. Not liking the odds of the two of us out in the open versus 3 shotguns, we turn on our heels and run back. We manage to grab a bunch of water and quickly make our exit. We discuss where we should go and end up going back out into the big room. We are not followed.

A few minutes later, we find another door leading into what seems like the same area. We do not enter, assuming an alarm has been sounded. A bit further ahead there are some stairs leading down into an area that seems much older. There's a split left-right, we go left for 10 minutes before we come upon a courtyard before a partially razed noble mansion. I'm able to recognize the noble family style, a now extinct but at the time very powerful family from my dear home planet Malfi. Someone's obviously been here before, probably to rob the place of its riches - there's a path into the house. We follow it. We come into a dinner area of sorts, with a very old corpse sitting at the head of the table. Unfortunately there is nothing useful in the room, just a gold ring with an encased ruby. A bit further ahead, the road is completely blocked. We find the would-be thief under a big pile of rubble. Luckily, he's got corpse starch rations enough to fill us up and last us another day. I must say, it's not half as bad as it sounds...he's also got a backpack and a shotgun. Aren't we quite the looters!

We go back to the junction and take the other way, but we quickly run into a dead end. By now we're very tired and it doesn't seem like we will find an exit anytime soon, so we decide to make camp and go to sleep. Dar sets up a trap of sorts in the stairs, which will warn us if anyone comes looking for trouble. Sure enough, on the last watch, the trap is sprung. We see 2 men, probably scouts. We will probably be able to kill them, but they might have enough time to sound an alarm, so we decide to try to hide in the noble courtyard.

Unfortunately it turns out there are six men in total in the party, as well as what looks like two sabre tooth tigers. Ordinarily this would have me quite excited as they are a very rare race indeed, but the prospect of studying their gigantic teeth from inside of their mouths dampens my enthusiasm a tad. The animal handlers loose the tigers when they're about 20 meters ahead. We decide to use our grenade, and Alpha runs forwards and manages to score a perfect hit, right in the middle of the group. ALL of the men go down, with just the tigers left! They charge us, but in their weakened state we quickly dispatch them, Dar suffering a bite but nothing lethal.

What looked like a dangerous encounter has now turned into an opportunity: we can enter the complex disguised. 4 of the cultists had masks, so everyone but Lazarus don their outfits. Our dear arbitrator puts on a guard outfit instead. We then head back into the cultist lair. We quickly find a room with more than sufficient provisions, canteens and backpacks. Some stairs and a corridor later, we find ourselves face to face with a rather large door with "Vault 13" imprinted on it, as well as a biohazard sign. Well, there's nothing to do but give it some stick and enter is there?

Inside, a huge area, at least 100 meters in diameter, opens up. 3 gigantic lamps illuminate parts of the area, lots of crates are spread throughout, the floor is mostly made up of metal gratings and there are a lot of cultists in the area. At the other end there is what looks like it might be our way out: an elevator, with 10-15 cultists in the immediate vicinity. We head towards it. About halfway another group comes towards us, we nod to them and walk past without incident. Excellent.

Closer to the elevator, we come upon an Imperial bunker and a hospital unit. Most strange...it is quite rare to find such buildings outside of the Imperial army. The doors of the bunker opens up, and out comes a familiar face, or should I say mask: the jackal-faced man and two hereteks. Jackal face is clearly not happy, shouting at the hereteks that an Inquisitor was brought here by the Heron without his knowledge, to be pried and mutilated. He kills one of them with what looks like a flaming whip, and instructs the other to discover what the "mangled Inquisitor" told the Heron, then goes into the elevator with a couple of guards. The heretek enters the hospital unit.

We discuss our options, and see no other course but to try to rescue any Inquisitor that might be held captive here. We enter the hospital unit, which not entirely unsurprisingly has been converted into more of a torture chamber. Ah cultists, quite predictable and ever so charming fellows. Blood is everywhere, the telltale instruments of torture are scattered throughout the area, and what looks like human skin lies on several slabs. The heretek is standing by one such slab, where an unfortunate fellow is hooked up to life support gear. A closer look reveals said gear to be quite vital to his survival, as all of his limbs have been cut off, an eye has been burned off and his Inquisitor pin has been seared into his bare flesh, in addition to more standard evidence of torture like burn marks, stab wounds and so forth. 

We quickly dispose of the heretek and go to talk to the mutilated Inquisitor. Here is what he tells us.

• His name is Inquisitor Nazauth Karkalla (whom I remember is a seasoned Inquisitor of the Amaltine faction belonging to Ordo Xenos) 
• We have been brought to the pleasure planet Quaddis, more specifically the Red Cages, which is a blood sport area run by the Beast House (legally)
• "The heron-masked man must be stopped, or the entire world is doomed!"
• He and his cadre came here to investigate the cult, but were ambushed. The only one left is one Septimus Dexter, nicknamed the White Scholar. He is somewhere in the city above, probably in areas connected to learning (such as there is on a planet like Quaddis). When we meet him, we are to ask "What can be found in the 9th stack Prol[...something]? His answer is to be "Emptiness". He is fairly easily recognized since he has an augmented arm and eye as well as long, grey hair.
• The Inquisitor calls the Jackal-faced man a "fool". His name is Marcus Vulpa.
• A festival called the Festival of Tattered Fates is fast approaching on Quaddis. It is marked by the Grand Conjunction, where the three moons of Quaddis line up to block the sun. During this time period, all laws are void and chaos reigns. Often used by the noble houses to settle scores. 

It is a testament to the Inquisitors' legendary willpower that Karkalla is even alive when we find him. Once he is able to divulge the critical information to us, his will to live quickly fades. I administer an overdose of painkillers, then we burn his body so the cultists cannot further desecrate his body.

We decide to take a quick look into the command bunker. No one is there, but a far more welcome sight greets us: our gear! Well, not all of it - most weaponry and mundane gear is gone, only the exotic stuff remains. Personally, I am beyond thrilled to find the pict recordings of the Greyskin Psalter and the Book Unbound untouched. If the Inquisitor's description of the jackal face is correct, he probably did not realize the value of what he was sitting on. We also find a carapace armor, which is obviously quite interesting for the more martially inclined in our cadre, as well as some money.

We decide to just go straight for the elevator, chancing that no one will question us given the amount of people in the area. This turns out to be quite correct, and we arrive unscathed to the surface. There's a big courtyard in front of a huge building on one side, and an exit to the streets of the city on the other. We go for the exit, and the guards do not stop us. Freedom!!!

Into the dark

In the middle of our dinner our dataslates light up: we have all received emergency messages from Lorelei Decanta: "HELP". That is all it contains, so of course we run of, pack up our gear, and hail a taxi for the only viable starting point, her apartment.

We approach carefully, Rupert hacks her door, and we enter. No trace of anything but normal life. We comb her apartment, and Alpha finds a well hidden secret compartment in a wall. It contains a slate, a box, a holy book and some credits. Rupert manages to convince the machine spirit of the slate to talk to him.

The spirit has a lot to tell, mostly normal inquisition material, and cases she has worked. Currently she seems to be working on infiltrating the Beast House, in disguise and under an alias. Her alias Dalia, was supposed to meet some Lothar about 24 hrs ago, at a warehouse called 134A6. She has also requested 6 imperial guards from Cpt Leviticus. Some checking reveals that these 6 also are missing.

We rent a van, and set out to 134A6. En route I write up a message of where we are and what we are doing for Inquisitor Whitlock, an queue it up for transfer at an astropath.

The warehouse looks worn and long abandoned, but we still enter very carefully, scanning for everything and anything. If what is here could take out Lorelei, we sure have to watch our step. Inside the warehouse looks every bit as bad as the outside, but in the middle there is a large, sturdy steel cage built over a deep pit with rafters on all sides. The Beast House stages fights with all kinds of beasts, and this looks like such a place. It smells horribly of death, both new and old. The new death comes from 3 bodies carelessly dumped into the pit. All executed by headshot.

We find a door, and proceed inward, avoiding a simple trap. Then we arrive a a 4-way intersection, into a torture room, a room with a dataslate and a stair down. We postpone the torture room, Rupert starts investigating the slate, that needs to have all entries closed to work. The rest of us head down, into the animal pens we find out. Here the stench is unbearable. We find more bodies. At the end of the room is something more interesting, a large tank recessed into the wall, and struggling on the surface is Lorelei. The tank seems to be filling...

We run like madmen, up the stairs, through the torture room, barely noticing the horrifically tortured corpse placed there, and into the room above the tank. Both waterflow and door to the tank is controlled by another slate. This one is trapped. We decide to get Rupert, and Dar rushes off to fetch him.

Rupert, Alpha and Potter succeeds at unlocking the door and turning off the flow, while Dar and I stand guard. Lorelei is also severly tortured, and in very bad shape. While we fix her up, a fairly large party of men in carapace armor, with masks of all kinds of beasts approach. We escape into the complex, as a voice hails us over loudspeakers 'Welcome to my little mace'!

In the next room we all eventually fall prey to a sleeping agent that is released, probably because we failed to appease the machine spirit at the slate in the room. Sometime later Rupert told me that he managed to get away from that room, but that he turned himself in at the threat of all of us being shot.

---time passes with horrible dreams in the dark and cold---

We wake up, with many others, chained half naked, standing to the thigs in cold water. We watch some creature with a gilded jackal mask with purple (something). A human (?) in a box does something horrible by magic to someone else, and this person is taken away.

---time passes with horrible dreams in the dark and cold---

We wake in a pit, with nothing, about 20 people all together. Judging from the growth on our faces I say that we has about a month and a half of facial hair. Everyone looks disoriented and worse for wear. Again a pit, smelling of death and decay. No points for guessing some connect to the beast house again. We hear a sound of metal against metal, and watch as a character with a heron mask pulls a lever, and a gate into the pit opens.

A few disgusting creatures appear, Rupert calls them spindle maws. In the beginning a few, which we kill easily, then more and more. Then heron face pulls another lever, and a ladder falls into the pit. We escape up it, while everyone else in the pit is killed.

At the top of the ladder we find a control terminal with the carcass of a very fat man hunched over it. He is so throat cut his head is practically falling off. Protruding from the desk a finely decorated dagger, piercing a note. The body also has a handcannon with 4 shots, and a meat hook. We take everything. (Haaken har glemt note, noe om en 'venn' i hallene over, men også noe om at ingen av oss kan stole på noen).

We set off, into huge halls, devoid of life. Going down some stairs we find a cave in with a skeleton partly buried. We manage to salvage an autopistol with some ammo and a flak vest of the skeleton. If just Potter could start functioning again we'd all be armed.

Proceeding we find another dead person, more recently dead. He lies on a small ledge above some underground lake, or waste repository, more like. This person has cut his own throat in front of some idol made from bone.  He has a slate with some text (denne har også Haaken glemt hva inneholdt).

T

We are examining the door to the crypt. There is definitely something puzzling about it, or them, rather. A crypt with two entries? I guess it makes sense if you are a Haarlock. And there seems to be a machine spirit loose behind one of them, the 'death is but a door'-door. Riddles, riddles, riddles. I like riddles, but it seems I can get enough of them.

Concluding we are stumped, we move to the private chambers, to see if we can suss out something useful. We see three pdf-troopers at the gate, among dozens of bodies. They are examining the barrier. We hail them, and I requisition their aid, in the name of the Inquisition. They tell us that the bodies are mostly pdf-troopers, killed by Grel and a group of his mourners. Also, one of the pdf-troopers has been aided by a highly skilled sniper, in the main hall.

We proceed into the private chambers, checking every one of them. We find little of interest, except the case for a really powerful sniper rifle in Marshreks chamber, marking him as the sniper. We proceed to the administratum wing, dropping by the pdf-armoury along the way to stock up, again to look for information and find the control room for the pdf-servitors.

At the control room, Alpha again appeases the machine spirits, and talks to them. There seems to be several spirits in the machine, and that the original spirit has been replaced by another, much older spirit, that comes from an unknown place. The replacing will cause all servitors in the complex to go amok in 30 minutes. To be sure we disable all combat servitors.

Alpha and Holder-Smith examine the old spirit further, and find out that one of the crypt doors will open. They work on tricking the old spirits secrets from it but fail, until the time that the crypt door will open. We go to watch. Turns out it is the 'herein lie the children of the kingdom'-door that opens. From the maw horrid creatures with snake bodies and humanlike heads and arms pour. We withdraw, and then proceed to the auction room, only to turn on our heel and head to the lilbrary.

At the library we find two erratic-behaving servitors, Dar taunts them into running into our ambush, and we destroy them easily. Inside the library it looks like a bomb has gone of. I get no points for deducing that Grel and the mourners has killed Septimus and his retinue, and Miss Nile' ashen tear assassin. Two children of the kingdom arrive, up close they are terrifying. Both Holder-Smith and I panic and run, but Dar shows off some really magnificent swings, and kills the things.

Moving again, we proceed to the main hall, and we find Marshrek in the 'rafters' above it. He relays that Wymer and Quill are dead, and that Jerger is hiding in a crypt. He has also seen Nile with a few servitors heading in that direction. She knows what we think, and it is safe to assume that she is going to kill Jerger to get out of the house of ash and dust. At Jergers hiding place we find his bodyguards dead and Jerger gone. The logical place to go is the auction room and the gilded widow. Marshrek comes with us. We run into more children, but we kill them. Dar again kills with abandon, but is wounded.

We find Nile with Wymer and Quill, and quickly realize that we have to kill them. At least I realize; I am very sure that Nile is a Logican, and that we have to kill her sooner rather than later. If we kill her now we can get that done, and maybe find a way out without having to control her at the same time. I also don't want to kill Jerger if I don't think I have to. We fight them, and kill them, but Dar is again gravely wounded, and frankly I don't understand how he even survived. The emperor smiles at us.

Then more children appear, and the situation suddenly seems much graver. I deem that we must gain exit NOW, and so Jerger needs to die. I am sorry for this, but no one can expect to live forever. His blood is just gathered in thin air, and slides into the chalice, I am stunned to realize I have freed a demon host. I truly should have seen it coming, but it never crossed my mind. The demon host says that she will stay true to her word and lower the shield. We gather a few choice items, and run for our lives, and onto the Zygan Martyr.

The trip to (hive) is uneventful; we report to Mar, and Holder-Smith pict records the Grey Psalter and the Book Unbound. I read the Book Unbound, it is utterly fascinating: unknown worlds, new civilizations, endless mysteries. And another mystery, the book itself: it contains veiled references to another book. There is no description of how to get anywher, and this book is a travel account. Intriguing. The start of the book is Solomons discovery of Calixis Sector, written by his own hand. The end of the book is Erasmus story, his writing changes profoundly after the schisma in the family, and seems to descend into madness.

Silas Mar meets us at the dock. He thanks us for our effort, and says he is 'most impressed'. He wants the books and the staff. The rest we can keep. I volunteer for a mind scan, I pass, and he rips apart our contract, and says we are free to do as we please. We find a hotel, and a decent dinner, and decide it is time for some well earned R & R.