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Creative Projects / Dark Heresy TTRPG with friends: Innocence proves nothing
« on: June 29, 2023, 04:38:51 pm »
The background:
Dark heresy is the tabletop RPG for the 40k setting. Three players (two recurring), elite level campaign (player chars start off with considerably more power, equal to a Rogue Trader/Ascension/Deathwatch char), second recurring session involving the sisters. All three players had sororitas char sheets.
THE CHARACTERS
Sister Legatine Blackgate, wielding a Zealous MKII storm bolter gilt in adamantium, purity seals and a red enamel symbol of the Inquisition. A relic formerly belonging to Lord Inquisitor Aster Euphrati, deemed lost in warp transit. Blackgate was the most ruthless and decisive within the retinue; once a target was determined to be guilty of something, their fate was sealed.
"Either he is guilty of being a heretic or guilty of being a witch. Where is Galen?" - Sister Blackgate, the hunt for Galen.
Sister Superior Myxodema, wielding a Martyr-pattern twin-linked storm bolter adorned by a single winged silver skull; a gift from forgeworld Omicron Alpha IX for aid rendered by the sisterhood. Myxodema was only slightly less ruthless than Blackgate. Whereas Blackgate would shoot a heretic first and ask questions later – Myxodema would pause first to aim, and then shoot.
"Do not be afraid. Your child is safe with us," - Sister Myxodema, the purge of Goodsprings.
Lastly, played by the player joining for a brief time. Sister Seraphim Madeline Beaufrost. Wielding a two-handed chainsword eviscerator with its own miniature power field, and two pistol sidearms. The only character who the players gave a first name to! A soft spoken and mild mannered sister, despite being the one with the two-handed chainsword.
All of them also had various useful gear & items. All of them were equipped with jump packs, which would allow them to catapult over difficult terrain into enemy formations, or escape out of difficult situations. The jump packs caused fear (1) to enemy foes, but most foes would not survive long enough to suffer the effects of such combat shock anyways. They could move faster than standard light infantry, jump and scale obstacles, engage in limited flight and safely drop vast heights.
Keeping in the theme of incendiary witch-hunters, the three of them had incendiary options like underslung flamers or flame pistols, three melta bombs, two blind grenades and one smoke grenade, and mastercrafted monomolecular combat knives. Armed to the teeth with so much nigh-unique wargear, power armour and relic weapons, between their gear and their skills the three sisters would stand a fair chance of killing a demon prince.
The Session
They set out from their convent-barracks in Hive Erebuni for the lowlands, the hive cityfolk glaring concernedly at the black convoy of stormtroopers. Their reception in the lowlands couldn't be more markedly different, the rural peasants cheering as the sinister vehicles passed by. Inquisitor Xavier Mordaunt greeted them at their destination all; he is their boss, and is pleased at the prior success of his retinue. The town of Goodsprings was named after its healing springs; but not long ago however it had been the site of the purge of Goodsprings.
Sister Blackgate and Myxodema led an investigation into a local healer, claiming divinity in his healing arts from the God-Emperor of mankind himself.
The swift investigation ended with the assembly of two squadrons of inquisitorial stormtroopers, a contingent of PDF mechanised infantry, an artillery battery, a squadron of scout titans and a lunar class cruiser in low orbit eliminating three entire towns with only four survivors – all recent orphans inducted into the schola progenium for rearing within the Imperium. The miracle healer managed to survive a sudden artillery strike on his location, using psyker biomancy to stitch his wounds back together again. For surviving against such impossible odds, he was summarily executed for being a dangerous witch.
The rural peasant principalities were gripped in an ensuing wave of resurgent devotion and zealousness. Ancient chapels were renovated as the people rediscovered their faith in the face of such overwhelming awe and persecution. Unable to resist the god-machines of the Imperium, the lowlanders turned the blame inwards on themselves for not being repentant and devoted enough. Such is life in the grim dark future.
But to Inquisitor Xavier Mordaunt; this is a mission well done.
Yet his work is not complete. The Dark Eldar continue their devastating slave raids on the lowlands, and despite the lowlanders’ rapid militarisation and fervent defence of their principalities, they are still but peasants armed with muskets facing off against an ancient alien civilisation armed with anti-grav bikes and dark matter weaponry. The Mechanicus is withdrawing much of its forces from Erebuni including its scout titans, for as far as their leader is concerned, the wastelands of Erebuni no longer provide any worthwhile chance of discovering valuable archaeological finds, and the Dark Eldar are simply not their problem. And whilst the lowlanders have seen the light of the Imperial faith, the elites of Hive Erebuni remain indolent and cynical, paying lip service to the demands of the God-Emperor's necrocratic creed. The Lord Governor is reticent, neither aligning himself with Inquisitor Mordaunt nor against him. Mordaunt suspects a rival inquisitor is applying pressure to him too. This fence-sitting is unnacceptable.
'The target is Bailong station,' Inquisitor Mordaunt told the sisters.
An orbital platform tethered to Hive Erebuni by a relic of the dark age of technology, Bailong Station was the terminus for a pristine space elevator, connecting the Hive to the expanse of the void. The space elevator is a site of pilgrimage to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but also the most important link between the hive world and its sister planets. Whilst it is not the only way on and off the world, it is by far the cheapest. The lowlanders grow food and mine raw materials, which are sent to hive Erebuni for refining into refined metals, chemicals and processed food products. These are sent to back to the lowlanders or up to Bailong station, where they are loaded up and sent to forge worlds and imperial worlds in exchange for heavy machinery and advanced goods, which the hive then trades with the lowlanders in a constant trade-cycle.
Like the Hive itself, most of Bailong station is controlled by a noble and ancient family. Here the Bowyang noble family rules its rich demense, guarding it jealously from aristocratic intrigues. They are staunch supporters of the Lord Governor, and their station is intrinsically valuable leverage over the Hive.
'I do not understand the politics well. But if there is a heretic to be slain, give me their name and I will give you their head,' Sister Blackgate tells Mordaunt, urging the Inquisitor to get to the point.
'Seize the station intact and eliminate the Bowyang Household. Anyone wearing the blue and red uniform of the Bowyang family must die.'
Inquisitor Mordaunt instructs them that they will attack from within with a simple ruse; they will ride the elevator up in command of a grain shipment. They will travel up in full armour and armament, hiding in plain view. It is not uncommon for armed personnel to hitch a ride on the space elevator to depart on their own voidcraft, and no one would suspect anyone would be foolish enough to attack a station with just three men.
Mordaunt directs them to consult with Cletus, one of the locals. Cletus is armed with a primitive matchlock rifle, and is of dubious use in battle. Yet he has heart, and he will be their local liaison. His entire body is tattooed in articles of faith and fire, which are conveniently also words tattooed on his knuckles. Mordaunt wastes no time himself, as he has places to be too. He gets on a VTOL craft and departs to go argue with the tech-priests of Mars, whilst Cletus directs the locals to begin loading the grain trucks with grain… And locals. Several tons of self-flagellating locals, hidden behind walls of grain and walls of pain.
Their grain trucks plod on through the Hive until they reach the loading station of the space elevator. They encounter their first hitch; a single inspector wearing a Bowyang uniform. He greets them apathetically, treating them with utter irreverence because as far as he’s concerned they’re just another bunch of passengers wasting his time with pointless questions. This is valuable time he could be eating lunch.
Sister Myxodema kills him with a single shot to the head. Some mechanicus pilgrim-monks notice the commotion and approach, and politely ignore the dead body, asking the sisters if they can offer their blessings to the relic-weapons they carry. The sisters agree, and the pilgrim-monks wreath the relic-weapons in flower garlands daubed in incense and sacred oils. The Mechanicus is not a friend of the greater noble houses. One of the elevator operators approaches. He does not wear the uniform of the Bowyang house. Whether he truly believes his boss died in a tragic loading accident, or he was just acting in self-preservation, he waves the grain convoy on through.
On the ascent up, the space elevator plays soothing elevator music. There are many other travellers riding up with them; between the assortment of spacers, voidmen, bounty hunters, merchant-traders and smugglers, the battle-sisters don’t look too out of place. An astropath on his way back to his ship accidentally overhears their thoughts – sister Myxodema is making a count of how many people aboard the station must die. The astropath recoils in fear and backs away towards his fellow crewmen; they in turn back away from him because they don’t want to be too near to a psyker, even a sanctioned one.
They reach Bailong station bay. The bay station (12) is just as cosmopolitan as the contents of the elevator. The sisters count the number of Bowyang men in the bay before coming up with an action plan. They speak over their internal vox-set so no nearby voidsmen can overhear their battle plan. They give the signal to Cletus who fires his musket in the air.
One of the bay foremen angrily rushes over to Cletus to discipline the lowlander for allowing a negligent discharge on his station. Yet the shot was merely the start of this poor foreman’s awful day. At the sound of the signal the grain silo doors and hatches slam open and the unleashed throngs of half-naked devotees and flagellants spill forth unto the bay floor like an oil spill on water. Against all odds the bay foreman manages to maintain discipline and order, and his loading staff are cajoled into remaining at their posts, narrowly managing to avoid his staff joining the half naked mob of Emperor-worshipping whipper-snappers.
Things get more tense as the bowyang men try and restore order on the bay floor. The flagellants are just flowing outwards and the more experienced spacers are beating a hasty retreat towards the well-guarded thresholds of their own personal vessels. Sometimes you just know it’s going to be one of those days where you won’t get anything useful or fun done.
Seeing that the flagellants are a bit on edge from their long and cramped journey stuck in a grain silo, Myxodema decides to begin adding their sororitas war chant to the mob’s imperial singing. The war chant is picked up and the atmosphere begins to take on a more decisively militant tone. The bowyang men are unnerved; they are big, strong men, but they are more accustomed to extorting clerks and petty merchants than they are with crowd control or sectarian dialogue.
One of the bowyang thugs accidentally pulls the trigger mid-way through shoving a flagellant away. The shotgun blast at point blank range kills the man outright. The calls for revenge turn to calls for violence, and violence begets more violence. Like smoking beside a barrel of gunpowder the flagellants turn and throw themselves suddenly against every unsealed hatch and doorway in a living tumult of iconoclastic violence.
The sisters’ assess the situation swiftly. Their main target is the patriarch of the Bowyang House; if they do not eliminate their leadership, the station is likely to resist the flagellating assault. The only way to reach the safe-house likely to house the Bowyang patriarch within this orbital citadel is to push for the centre; so the only way is onwards.
The ill-prepared Bowyang boys are armed with shotguns, laspistols and simple clubs; though they still significantly out-gun the flagellants, who are only armed with primitive lowlander weapons, the sheer mass of frenzied flagellants turns the station into a brutal melee where they are at risk of being dangerously overrun. The sisters engage their jump packs and soar over the flagellants, identifying the strongest point in the Bowyang defensive line. There are nine men; eight of them wear flak armour with their uniforms. One alone takes off his shirt to reveal a slightly muscular frame covered in Bowyang tattoos. He carries a fireaxe in one hand and a sawn-off scattergun in the other.
The Bowyang thugs retreat up a staircase onto a raised mezzanine. Some of the men fire their shotguns as they fall back; others run as fast as they can. Two of the Bowyang thugs are too slow; they are torn to pieces by the angry mob. Three are gunned down by the explosive incendiary rounds from Blackgate’s storm bolter. Seeing the power-armoured foe and the unstoppable horde approaching, all of them begin sprinting as fast as they can towards the safety of the second station rings. They don’t get paid enough to lay down their lives for the Bowyang House.
The man with the tattoos stands firm. He is the Bowyang Rook; his men call out to him, begging him to fall back with them. He commands them to leave without him, and they begin sealing the door without him as the Bowyang Rook stands firm.
Myxodema unleashes a torrent of automatic stormfire on him. Her aim is poor; she misses every shot.
‘You need to practice more Myxodema,’ Blackgate mocks her, implying she’s gotten rusty.
Sister Beaufrost ignores the banter in typical taciturn fashion and is the first to reach the foe in close combat. She crashes into him with devastating force, bringing her eviscerator chainsword down in a killing-strike.
He rolls to parry, and gets a 1. With his fire-axe he manages to hook Beaufrost’s chainsword by the hilt and grapple her. Already the table is shocked out of character, as this guy is statted as a fairly mediocre guy, with 25 WS and 35 S. He is only a little bit stronger than the average imperial pencil-pusher, and yet he manages to win a contested strength against a sororitas Seraphim in master-crafted power armour. Crazy what adrenaline does to you in the moment.
Sister Blackgate asks Beaufrost if she needs assistance; she accidentally calls her Sister Bluntforce, and the nickname sticks.
‘Do you have any idea who we are? This is Bailong Station!’ The Bowyang Rook roars defiantly.
‘We know.’ Blackgate takes careful aim; she shoots, but the Bowyang Rook manages to dodge the well-aimed shot, placing Bluntforce in between him and her line of fire.
‘Looks like you need to practice, Sister Blackgate,’ Myxodema retorts via voxset, over the din of the battle.
The Rook fires a point-blank shot at Bluntforce. She stumbles back a step, but is utterly unharmed by the impact. She cocks her head to the side, dodging a wild swing from his axe. Bravado and fatalism is coursing through his heart, pushing him to his limits as he buys as much time for his boys as he can.
Sister Myxodema assaults the Rook, attempting to stun him with a strike to the head. He takes it and against all odds passes his toughness test, blood running from his nose as he tanks a power-armoured fist to the face. His vision blurs, but he's still standing. It's more than most could handle.
Sister Bluntforce strikes again. He's too slow to dodge, and this time her strike sings true; the Rook parries the strike with the handle of his axe, but the chainsword eats its way through completely.
He is almost completely bisected by the vicious strike. Yet he has done his duty; the door is sealed, and the men have linked up with reinforcements. He held them all off for three rounds, when by all accounts he shouldn’t have survived one.
Sister Bluntforce cuts her way through the door and carries it onwards, using it as mobile cover, the servos in her power armour complaining of the burden she places upon them – but they hold firm.
Facing off against her are the surviving thugs and members of the Bowyang Guard, the more well-equipped and popular parade boys of the Bowyang House. Two heavy stubber teams and a multilaser team let off a devastating volley of suppressive fire. Bluntforce manages to endure the heavy stubber fire, but the multilaser fire takes her out in an onslaught of focused fire.
Bluntforce burns a fate point to barely survive the ordeal, but for all intents and purposes she’s out of the fight as a casualty.
Myxodema and Blackgate take this opportunity to assault the breach. They flank the heavy gunner teams and their cover, gunning them down in a torrent of storm bolter fire. The incendiary rounds trigger the sprinkler system; the Flagellants deal with the surviving thugs who try and fail to pin the horde of frenzied lowlanders. Cletus rolls to hit one of the surviving thugs, and manages to get three degrees of success... He would probably have killed them, were it not for the sprinklers damping his matchlock, causing it to misfire. Nevertheless, the room is secured. They make sure Bluntforce’s condition is stable before sending her back to the flagellants’ makeshift HQ in the bay. That is the best they can do before they continue on their mission.
They burst into a large and opulent banquet hall full of various nobles. Not all of the nobles are from the Bowyang House; many are visitors. They are still here despite the warning sirens the Bowyang Guard triggered. When the nobles heard the sirens, they merely instructed the station staff to turn off the alarms, as they were interrupting their lovely dinner event.
‘Should we sort them out first? Not all of them are Bowyang,’ Myodema asked Blackgate.
‘Kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, we would have had to turn against the other noble houses eventually,’ Blackgate said, readying her storm bolter. Myxodema nodded in agreement.
The two sisters used their underslung flamers and their storm bolters to tear through the crowd of shell-shocked nobles and their poor guards & attendants. When all was said and done, no one had escaped. The fires from their incendiary and dragonfire rounds ignited much of the banquet hall, causing the station sprinkler system to activate here too. This soaks Cletus’s matchlock and he spends the next hour replacing it, disappointed he is yet to contribute to the holy mission. They also take one of the nobles’ severed hands to unlock the biometrically sealed security doors ahead. Whilst Cletus and the flagellants remain close behind them, the sisters scout ahead.
Down the stairs, now pouring a steady stream of blood and water, the sisters following the flowing stream until they emerged in a large, circular ballroom. Five chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and the tainted water is now ankle-deep. The water is still but for the ripples each fighter casts in the shallows.
A pair of twins in Bowyang garb are waiting for them. The two brothers both carry twin chain-axes each, and were covered head to toe in primitive but formidable looking plate armour.
They charged at the sisters, who engaged their jump packs and landed on the chandeliers.
The brothers were anguished at the sisters evading them, denying them the thrill of a good scrappy fight. They ran to the chains holding the chandeliers up, seeking to cut them and bring them crashing down to earth so they could get the fight they wanted.
‘Blood for the Blood Emperor! Skulls for the golden throne!’ They screamed.
The sisters opened fire on the brothers. One brother went down; his body in ruins. The other brother twin was suffused and wreathed in warp energies, and his twin arose from the water, his flesh stitching itself anew. He picked up his fallen chain-axes and continued running towards the chandelier controls.
‘We kill the witch brothers at the same time,’ Myxodema said to Blackgate, who nodded affirmative.
They readied their shots, and put the witch brothers down with synchronised gunfire.
This time, they stayed dead.
They pressed onwards, bringing the flagellants and Cletus with them. Beyond the ballroom was a vast and impressive botanical garden, full of a variety of exotic and valuable plants. They noticed with some distaste the presence of xeno plants, including some dangerous deathworld species. But they encounter no Bowyang household staff, none living anyways. All of them appear to have been killed with precise, close-range fire.
It’s not long before they find the culprit. They soon encounter a band of well-armed voidsmen, garbed head to toe in carapace armour and armed with combat shotguns and hotshot lasguns. The voidsmen and the sisters both negotiate, and quickly confirm they are both working for Inquisitor Mordaunt (Myxodema scrutinises them intensely - but they do not balk under her gaze).
The voidsmen are trying to secure the station’s plasma reactor; some of them will stay behind and fortify the botanical gardens whilst the sisters press on ahead to secure or eliminate the patriarch. The flagellants and Cletus remain behind with the voidsmen; they happily begin exterminating xenoplants and narcotic flowers in the gardens.
The two sisters finally reach the end of the third ring; and at the end, the long steps leading up to the grand doors of the Bowyang chief.
At the top of the stairs and beyond the grand doors is a simple hallway, with all of its doors locked and sealed shut. A single man in power-armour stands in their way. The air shimmers around him faintly; he wears no helmet but bears no scars, and carries a balanced chainsword in one hand.
‘The Chief is not taking any more appointments. You must leave,’ the duelist says wryly, with a rev of his chainsword.
‘We insist on an appointment,’ Myxodema says. The duelist smiles, salutes with his chainsword and charges at them.
He is unnaturally fast and closes the gap between them swiftly – faster than they can react. They suspect he may have bionic augmentations. He presses forwards, attacks relentlessly, forces them back and attacks again when they are thrown off-balance. Myxodema barely manages to avoid getting hit; burning her last fate point to survive the assault. She disengages and falls back whilst laying down suppressive fire. Blackgate takes point whilst her ally retreats and unloads a salvo of fully automatic fire at the duellist’s head. His power field activates and blocks some of the shots; he dodges the rest with incredible grace.
Blackgate fares a little better against the duellist, and eventually the two manage to lay down enough fire to overload his power field and a single explosive round catches him off guard – taking his head clean off. A fountain of blood erupts from the remains of his neck, showering Blackgate in an uncomfortably warm red rain. She thanks Myxodema for helping her out, but curses her luck as she wipes the blood from her optics.
They loot his overloaded power field and examine the security door. They have two melta bombs, and are preparing to use them to open the door, when the voidsmen report they are engaged with enemy kill-teams. The reports turn to panicked shouting as they call for reinforcements.
Myxodema and Blackgate come to a decision. They were risking their mission by doubling back, but they intended to keep as many flagellants and voidsmen alive too.
They pop a smoke grenade and take up defensive positions. The flagellants hide in the foliage; the voidsmen take cover and the sisters wait in location ready to strike from above.
The laser-sights of the Bowyang kill-team troopers pierce the smoke as they search for targets and threats, seeing the dead bodies of their comrades strewn about. Their mission is to extract the chief; they are well equipped for the task. Each of them carried a highly-modified hellgun with a custom grip allowing them to fire their lasgun one-handed, and some are modified to take hotshot cells whilst others are modified to have a selective-fire mode. In their left hand each kill-team trooper carried a body-length combat shield to better provide cover for their VIP and engage in vicious close-quarters station combat. They were clad head to toe in red and blue carapace armour with advanced optics in their helmets; this was not as good as the power armour the sisters had, but it was pretty close.
This would be troublesome enough, but unfortunately for them, the kill-team troopers enlisted the aid of Mindy.
Mindy was a robust and heavy track-set combat servitor. Emerging from the smoke, she carried quad-linked hydra autocannons, and her brain-cogitator interface was well suited for tracking flying and nimble targets.
They had nine voidsmen, fourteen flagellants, Cletus and the two sisters against twelve kill-team troopers and Mindy. They had little time to plan; the sisters took one look at the autocannons and concluded if Mindy opened fire for even a single round, none of them would survive. They were probably right.
The flagellants charge from the foliage; the kill-team troopers failed the roll to detect them. Some of the voidsmen lay suppressive fire down on the kill-team troopers whilst those armed with hot-shot lasguns aim at Mindy. The kill-team remains disciplined in the face of gunfire whilst Mindy is unphased by their panicked assault. One voidsman is killed in the returning fire, whilst the kill-team continues their ruthless advance.
Mindy is slow; she is last on the initiative order. Myxodema takes to the sky and passes her strength test to handle the unwieldy and heavy melta-bomb. She passes her jump pack test to see if she can close in on the combat-servitor on a proper attack-vector. She passes her ballistic skill test to see if she can throw the melta bomb at the servitor in a way the melta bomb was most definitely not designed to be used. Each time – multiple degrees of success.
The overwhelming damage tears through Mindy’s resistances and the combat servitor is wiped out in a ball of superheated melta-blast. The sororitas and the kill-team have their optics temporarily overloaded in the blast and the voidsmen and flagellants are forced to look away from the inferno.
The sororitas and the troopers recover quickly. The kill-team’s tactics change; with the loss of Mindy, they focus on reaching their boss and extracting him, unsure now if they can overcome their foes before their reinforcements arrive.
The kill-team troopers break off into many smaller fire-teams. Some engage the flagellants in CQC, keeping their allies' backs safe. Others lay down suppressive fire on the sisters, whilst others use the suppressive fire on the voidsmen. Those with hotshot hellguns take aim at suppressed targets, eliminating them one by one. Four break off and form a phalanx, trying to force their way through to the chief. The kill-team troopers are competent and their tactics are successful, if costly. They eliminate six flagellants and four voidsmen, severely wounding a fifth. One of the fireteams manages to force Myxodema out of the sky with suppressive fire, and a well-aimed hellgun shot brings her to her last two wounds.
She crash-lands on a catachan man-catcher plant. The plant engages in a contested strength contest with her and its crushing grip manages to just barely beat her power armour, bringing her down to her last wound. I tell Myxodema’s player OOC that I will lose my shit if they die to a fucking leaf.
They cut their way out. Cletus actually manages to roll well enough to heavily wound a kill-team trooper with a musket shot; the flagellants finish him off. Given that both were using primitive weapons I felt it was fair to give them both shared credit. The last kill-team troopers manage to fight their way to the chief’s door; but they are flanked by the sisters and assailed on all sides by the surviving flagellants and voidsmen.
Blackgate and Myxodema kill the last kill-trooper moments before he was about to pull the pin on his last grenade.
They waste no time placing a melta bomb and breaching a hole in the chief’s wall.
The Bowyang Chief does not attempt to run, or hide. He sits there in his leopard print briefs and his silk bathrobe, smoking an iho stick with one hand and holding a glass of fine amasec in the other. He knows at this point the game’s up.
‘Who sent you? You know what, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m a sore loser.’
The Bowyang Chief points his finger at the sisters in a finger-gun gesture.
‘Bang,’ he says, as the ring on his finger activates. The ring is a neat little piece of archaeotech, a miniature digi-las weapon. He misses the shot; Myxodema does not miss hers. Two bolter rounds hit him in his chest; they detonate, and he is nearly sawn in half by the blasts. His amasec glass smashes on the floor as his body slumps to the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes.
They claim the ring. A third of their flagellant cohort survived, less than half of the voidsmen squad, and one sister downed; it’s unknown how the others in the station have fared, but with the Bowyang Chief dead it’s over for the station.
Myxodema counts their tally; the sororitas squadron accounted for 59 confirmed kills on Bowyang troops and nobles, 34 nobles/attendants from other noble houses, and after much discussion, decided that the witch brothers counted as one despite dying twice whilst Mindy would count as a Bowyang member since they named her. Cletus accounted for 1 confirmed kill; a fine showing for Goodsprings.
From the Chief’s control room, they disable the station’s defences. More Mordaunt-aligned forces arrive to secure the station and mop up any last resistance. Bailong Station had fallen. Mission accomplished.
Dark heresy is the tabletop RPG for the 40k setting. Three players (two recurring), elite level campaign (player chars start off with considerably more power, equal to a Rogue Trader/Ascension/Deathwatch char), second recurring session involving the sisters. All three players had sororitas char sheets.
THE CHARACTERS
Sister Legatine Blackgate, wielding a Zealous MKII storm bolter gilt in adamantium, purity seals and a red enamel symbol of the Inquisition. A relic formerly belonging to Lord Inquisitor Aster Euphrati, deemed lost in warp transit. Blackgate was the most ruthless and decisive within the retinue; once a target was determined to be guilty of something, their fate was sealed.
"Either he is guilty of being a heretic or guilty of being a witch. Where is Galen?" - Sister Blackgate, the hunt for Galen.
Sister Superior Myxodema, wielding a Martyr-pattern twin-linked storm bolter adorned by a single winged silver skull; a gift from forgeworld Omicron Alpha IX for aid rendered by the sisterhood. Myxodema was only slightly less ruthless than Blackgate. Whereas Blackgate would shoot a heretic first and ask questions later – Myxodema would pause first to aim, and then shoot.
"Do not be afraid. Your child is safe with us," - Sister Myxodema, the purge of Goodsprings.
Lastly, played by the player joining for a brief time. Sister Seraphim Madeline Beaufrost. Wielding a two-handed chainsword eviscerator with its own miniature power field, and two pistol sidearms. The only character who the players gave a first name to! A soft spoken and mild mannered sister, despite being the one with the two-handed chainsword.
All of them also had various useful gear & items. All of them were equipped with jump packs, which would allow them to catapult over difficult terrain into enemy formations, or escape out of difficult situations. The jump packs caused fear (1) to enemy foes, but most foes would not survive long enough to suffer the effects of such combat shock anyways. They could move faster than standard light infantry, jump and scale obstacles, engage in limited flight and safely drop vast heights.
Keeping in the theme of incendiary witch-hunters, the three of them had incendiary options like underslung flamers or flame pistols, three melta bombs, two blind grenades and one smoke grenade, and mastercrafted monomolecular combat knives. Armed to the teeth with so much nigh-unique wargear, power armour and relic weapons, between their gear and their skills the three sisters would stand a fair chance of killing a demon prince.
The Session
They set out from their convent-barracks in Hive Erebuni for the lowlands, the hive cityfolk glaring concernedly at the black convoy of stormtroopers. Their reception in the lowlands couldn't be more markedly different, the rural peasants cheering as the sinister vehicles passed by. Inquisitor Xavier Mordaunt greeted them at their destination all; he is their boss, and is pleased at the prior success of his retinue. The town of Goodsprings was named after its healing springs; but not long ago however it had been the site of the purge of Goodsprings.
Sister Blackgate and Myxodema led an investigation into a local healer, claiming divinity in his healing arts from the God-Emperor of mankind himself.
The swift investigation ended with the assembly of two squadrons of inquisitorial stormtroopers, a contingent of PDF mechanised infantry, an artillery battery, a squadron of scout titans and a lunar class cruiser in low orbit eliminating three entire towns with only four survivors – all recent orphans inducted into the schola progenium for rearing within the Imperium. The miracle healer managed to survive a sudden artillery strike on his location, using psyker biomancy to stitch his wounds back together again. For surviving against such impossible odds, he was summarily executed for being a dangerous witch.
The rural peasant principalities were gripped in an ensuing wave of resurgent devotion and zealousness. Ancient chapels were renovated as the people rediscovered their faith in the face of such overwhelming awe and persecution. Unable to resist the god-machines of the Imperium, the lowlanders turned the blame inwards on themselves for not being repentant and devoted enough. Such is life in the grim dark future.
But to Inquisitor Xavier Mordaunt; this is a mission well done.
Yet his work is not complete. The Dark Eldar continue their devastating slave raids on the lowlands, and despite the lowlanders’ rapid militarisation and fervent defence of their principalities, they are still but peasants armed with muskets facing off against an ancient alien civilisation armed with anti-grav bikes and dark matter weaponry. The Mechanicus is withdrawing much of its forces from Erebuni including its scout titans, for as far as their leader is concerned, the wastelands of Erebuni no longer provide any worthwhile chance of discovering valuable archaeological finds, and the Dark Eldar are simply not their problem. And whilst the lowlanders have seen the light of the Imperial faith, the elites of Hive Erebuni remain indolent and cynical, paying lip service to the demands of the God-Emperor's necrocratic creed. The Lord Governor is reticent, neither aligning himself with Inquisitor Mordaunt nor against him. Mordaunt suspects a rival inquisitor is applying pressure to him too. This fence-sitting is unnacceptable.
'The target is Bailong station,' Inquisitor Mordaunt told the sisters.
An orbital platform tethered to Hive Erebuni by a relic of the dark age of technology, Bailong Station was the terminus for a pristine space elevator, connecting the Hive to the expanse of the void. The space elevator is a site of pilgrimage to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but also the most important link between the hive world and its sister planets. Whilst it is not the only way on and off the world, it is by far the cheapest. The lowlanders grow food and mine raw materials, which are sent to hive Erebuni for refining into refined metals, chemicals and processed food products. These are sent to back to the lowlanders or up to Bailong station, where they are loaded up and sent to forge worlds and imperial worlds in exchange for heavy machinery and advanced goods, which the hive then trades with the lowlanders in a constant trade-cycle.
Like the Hive itself, most of Bailong station is controlled by a noble and ancient family. Here the Bowyang noble family rules its rich demense, guarding it jealously from aristocratic intrigues. They are staunch supporters of the Lord Governor, and their station is intrinsically valuable leverage over the Hive.
'I do not understand the politics well. But if there is a heretic to be slain, give me their name and I will give you their head,' Sister Blackgate tells Mordaunt, urging the Inquisitor to get to the point.
'Seize the station intact and eliminate the Bowyang Household. Anyone wearing the blue and red uniform of the Bowyang family must die.'
Inquisitor Mordaunt instructs them that they will attack from within with a simple ruse; they will ride the elevator up in command of a grain shipment. They will travel up in full armour and armament, hiding in plain view. It is not uncommon for armed personnel to hitch a ride on the space elevator to depart on their own voidcraft, and no one would suspect anyone would be foolish enough to attack a station with just three men.
Mordaunt directs them to consult with Cletus, one of the locals. Cletus is armed with a primitive matchlock rifle, and is of dubious use in battle. Yet he has heart, and he will be their local liaison. His entire body is tattooed in articles of faith and fire, which are conveniently also words tattooed on his knuckles. Mordaunt wastes no time himself, as he has places to be too. He gets on a VTOL craft and departs to go argue with the tech-priests of Mars, whilst Cletus directs the locals to begin loading the grain trucks with grain… And locals. Several tons of self-flagellating locals, hidden behind walls of grain and walls of pain.
Their grain trucks plod on through the Hive until they reach the loading station of the space elevator. They encounter their first hitch; a single inspector wearing a Bowyang uniform. He greets them apathetically, treating them with utter irreverence because as far as he’s concerned they’re just another bunch of passengers wasting his time with pointless questions. This is valuable time he could be eating lunch.
Sister Myxodema kills him with a single shot to the head. Some mechanicus pilgrim-monks notice the commotion and approach, and politely ignore the dead body, asking the sisters if they can offer their blessings to the relic-weapons they carry. The sisters agree, and the pilgrim-monks wreath the relic-weapons in flower garlands daubed in incense and sacred oils. The Mechanicus is not a friend of the greater noble houses. One of the elevator operators approaches. He does not wear the uniform of the Bowyang house. Whether he truly believes his boss died in a tragic loading accident, or he was just acting in self-preservation, he waves the grain convoy on through.
On the ascent up, the space elevator plays soothing elevator music. There are many other travellers riding up with them; between the assortment of spacers, voidmen, bounty hunters, merchant-traders and smugglers, the battle-sisters don’t look too out of place. An astropath on his way back to his ship accidentally overhears their thoughts – sister Myxodema is making a count of how many people aboard the station must die. The astropath recoils in fear and backs away towards his fellow crewmen; they in turn back away from him because they don’t want to be too near to a psyker, even a sanctioned one.
They reach Bailong station bay. The bay station (12) is just as cosmopolitan as the contents of the elevator. The sisters count the number of Bowyang men in the bay before coming up with an action plan. They speak over their internal vox-set so no nearby voidsmen can overhear their battle plan. They give the signal to Cletus who fires his musket in the air.
One of the bay foremen angrily rushes over to Cletus to discipline the lowlander for allowing a negligent discharge on his station. Yet the shot was merely the start of this poor foreman’s awful day. At the sound of the signal the grain silo doors and hatches slam open and the unleashed throngs of half-naked devotees and flagellants spill forth unto the bay floor like an oil spill on water. Against all odds the bay foreman manages to maintain discipline and order, and his loading staff are cajoled into remaining at their posts, narrowly managing to avoid his staff joining the half naked mob of Emperor-worshipping whipper-snappers.
Things get more tense as the bowyang men try and restore order on the bay floor. The flagellants are just flowing outwards and the more experienced spacers are beating a hasty retreat towards the well-guarded thresholds of their own personal vessels. Sometimes you just know it’s going to be one of those days where you won’t get anything useful or fun done.
Seeing that the flagellants are a bit on edge from their long and cramped journey stuck in a grain silo, Myxodema decides to begin adding their sororitas war chant to the mob’s imperial singing. The war chant is picked up and the atmosphere begins to take on a more decisively militant tone. The bowyang men are unnerved; they are big, strong men, but they are more accustomed to extorting clerks and petty merchants than they are with crowd control or sectarian dialogue.
One of the bowyang thugs accidentally pulls the trigger mid-way through shoving a flagellant away. The shotgun blast at point blank range kills the man outright. The calls for revenge turn to calls for violence, and violence begets more violence. Like smoking beside a barrel of gunpowder the flagellants turn and throw themselves suddenly against every unsealed hatch and doorway in a living tumult of iconoclastic violence.
The sisters’ assess the situation swiftly. Their main target is the patriarch of the Bowyang House; if they do not eliminate their leadership, the station is likely to resist the flagellating assault. The only way to reach the safe-house likely to house the Bowyang patriarch within this orbital citadel is to push for the centre; so the only way is onwards.
The ill-prepared Bowyang boys are armed with shotguns, laspistols and simple clubs; though they still significantly out-gun the flagellants, who are only armed with primitive lowlander weapons, the sheer mass of frenzied flagellants turns the station into a brutal melee where they are at risk of being dangerously overrun. The sisters engage their jump packs and soar over the flagellants, identifying the strongest point in the Bowyang defensive line. There are nine men; eight of them wear flak armour with their uniforms. One alone takes off his shirt to reveal a slightly muscular frame covered in Bowyang tattoos. He carries a fireaxe in one hand and a sawn-off scattergun in the other.
The Bowyang thugs retreat up a staircase onto a raised mezzanine. Some of the men fire their shotguns as they fall back; others run as fast as they can. Two of the Bowyang thugs are too slow; they are torn to pieces by the angry mob. Three are gunned down by the explosive incendiary rounds from Blackgate’s storm bolter. Seeing the power-armoured foe and the unstoppable horde approaching, all of them begin sprinting as fast as they can towards the safety of the second station rings. They don’t get paid enough to lay down their lives for the Bowyang House.
The man with the tattoos stands firm. He is the Bowyang Rook; his men call out to him, begging him to fall back with them. He commands them to leave without him, and they begin sealing the door without him as the Bowyang Rook stands firm.
Myxodema unleashes a torrent of automatic stormfire on him. Her aim is poor; she misses every shot.
‘You need to practice more Myxodema,’ Blackgate mocks her, implying she’s gotten rusty.
Sister Beaufrost ignores the banter in typical taciturn fashion and is the first to reach the foe in close combat. She crashes into him with devastating force, bringing her eviscerator chainsword down in a killing-strike.
He rolls to parry, and gets a 1. With his fire-axe he manages to hook Beaufrost’s chainsword by the hilt and grapple her. Already the table is shocked out of character, as this guy is statted as a fairly mediocre guy, with 25 WS and 35 S. He is only a little bit stronger than the average imperial pencil-pusher, and yet he manages to win a contested strength against a sororitas Seraphim in master-crafted power armour. Crazy what adrenaline does to you in the moment.
Sister Blackgate asks Beaufrost if she needs assistance; she accidentally calls her Sister Bluntforce, and the nickname sticks.
‘Do you have any idea who we are? This is Bailong Station!’ The Bowyang Rook roars defiantly.
‘We know.’ Blackgate takes careful aim; she shoots, but the Bowyang Rook manages to dodge the well-aimed shot, placing Bluntforce in between him and her line of fire.
‘Looks like you need to practice, Sister Blackgate,’ Myxodema retorts via voxset, over the din of the battle.
The Rook fires a point-blank shot at Bluntforce. She stumbles back a step, but is utterly unharmed by the impact. She cocks her head to the side, dodging a wild swing from his axe. Bravado and fatalism is coursing through his heart, pushing him to his limits as he buys as much time for his boys as he can.
Sister Myxodema assaults the Rook, attempting to stun him with a strike to the head. He takes it and against all odds passes his toughness test, blood running from his nose as he tanks a power-armoured fist to the face. His vision blurs, but he's still standing. It's more than most could handle.
Sister Bluntforce strikes again. He's too slow to dodge, and this time her strike sings true; the Rook parries the strike with the handle of his axe, but the chainsword eats its way through completely.
He is almost completely bisected by the vicious strike. Yet he has done his duty; the door is sealed, and the men have linked up with reinforcements. He held them all off for three rounds, when by all accounts he shouldn’t have survived one.
Sister Bluntforce cuts her way through the door and carries it onwards, using it as mobile cover, the servos in her power armour complaining of the burden she places upon them – but they hold firm.
Facing off against her are the surviving thugs and members of the Bowyang Guard, the more well-equipped and popular parade boys of the Bowyang House. Two heavy stubber teams and a multilaser team let off a devastating volley of suppressive fire. Bluntforce manages to endure the heavy stubber fire, but the multilaser fire takes her out in an onslaught of focused fire.
Bluntforce burns a fate point to barely survive the ordeal, but for all intents and purposes she’s out of the fight as a casualty.
Myxodema and Blackgate take this opportunity to assault the breach. They flank the heavy gunner teams and their cover, gunning them down in a torrent of storm bolter fire. The incendiary rounds trigger the sprinkler system; the Flagellants deal with the surviving thugs who try and fail to pin the horde of frenzied lowlanders. Cletus rolls to hit one of the surviving thugs, and manages to get three degrees of success... He would probably have killed them, were it not for the sprinklers damping his matchlock, causing it to misfire. Nevertheless, the room is secured. They make sure Bluntforce’s condition is stable before sending her back to the flagellants’ makeshift HQ in the bay. That is the best they can do before they continue on their mission.
They burst into a large and opulent banquet hall full of various nobles. Not all of the nobles are from the Bowyang House; many are visitors. They are still here despite the warning sirens the Bowyang Guard triggered. When the nobles heard the sirens, they merely instructed the station staff to turn off the alarms, as they were interrupting their lovely dinner event.
‘Should we sort them out first? Not all of them are Bowyang,’ Myodema asked Blackgate.
‘Kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, we would have had to turn against the other noble houses eventually,’ Blackgate said, readying her storm bolter. Myxodema nodded in agreement.
The two sisters used their underslung flamers and their storm bolters to tear through the crowd of shell-shocked nobles and their poor guards & attendants. When all was said and done, no one had escaped. The fires from their incendiary and dragonfire rounds ignited much of the banquet hall, causing the station sprinkler system to activate here too. This soaks Cletus’s matchlock and he spends the next hour replacing it, disappointed he is yet to contribute to the holy mission. They also take one of the nobles’ severed hands to unlock the biometrically sealed security doors ahead. Whilst Cletus and the flagellants remain close behind them, the sisters scout ahead.
Down the stairs, now pouring a steady stream of blood and water, the sisters following the flowing stream until they emerged in a large, circular ballroom. Five chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and the tainted water is now ankle-deep. The water is still but for the ripples each fighter casts in the shallows.
A pair of twins in Bowyang garb are waiting for them. The two brothers both carry twin chain-axes each, and were covered head to toe in primitive but formidable looking plate armour.
They charged at the sisters, who engaged their jump packs and landed on the chandeliers.
The brothers were anguished at the sisters evading them, denying them the thrill of a good scrappy fight. They ran to the chains holding the chandeliers up, seeking to cut them and bring them crashing down to earth so they could get the fight they wanted.
‘Blood for the Blood Emperor! Skulls for the golden throne!’ They screamed.
The sisters opened fire on the brothers. One brother went down; his body in ruins. The other brother twin was suffused and wreathed in warp energies, and his twin arose from the water, his flesh stitching itself anew. He picked up his fallen chain-axes and continued running towards the chandelier controls.
‘We kill the witch brothers at the same time,’ Myxodema said to Blackgate, who nodded affirmative.
They readied their shots, and put the witch brothers down with synchronised gunfire.
This time, they stayed dead.
They pressed onwards, bringing the flagellants and Cletus with them. Beyond the ballroom was a vast and impressive botanical garden, full of a variety of exotic and valuable plants. They noticed with some distaste the presence of xeno plants, including some dangerous deathworld species. But they encounter no Bowyang household staff, none living anyways. All of them appear to have been killed with precise, close-range fire.
It’s not long before they find the culprit. They soon encounter a band of well-armed voidsmen, garbed head to toe in carapace armour and armed with combat shotguns and hotshot lasguns. The voidsmen and the sisters both negotiate, and quickly confirm they are both working for Inquisitor Mordaunt (Myxodema scrutinises them intensely - but they do not balk under her gaze).
The voidsmen are trying to secure the station’s plasma reactor; some of them will stay behind and fortify the botanical gardens whilst the sisters press on ahead to secure or eliminate the patriarch. The flagellants and Cletus remain behind with the voidsmen; they happily begin exterminating xenoplants and narcotic flowers in the gardens.
The two sisters finally reach the end of the third ring; and at the end, the long steps leading up to the grand doors of the Bowyang chief.
At the top of the stairs and beyond the grand doors is a simple hallway, with all of its doors locked and sealed shut. A single man in power-armour stands in their way. The air shimmers around him faintly; he wears no helmet but bears no scars, and carries a balanced chainsword in one hand.
‘The Chief is not taking any more appointments. You must leave,’ the duelist says wryly, with a rev of his chainsword.
‘We insist on an appointment,’ Myxodema says. The duelist smiles, salutes with his chainsword and charges at them.
He is unnaturally fast and closes the gap between them swiftly – faster than they can react. They suspect he may have bionic augmentations. He presses forwards, attacks relentlessly, forces them back and attacks again when they are thrown off-balance. Myxodema barely manages to avoid getting hit; burning her last fate point to survive the assault. She disengages and falls back whilst laying down suppressive fire. Blackgate takes point whilst her ally retreats and unloads a salvo of fully automatic fire at the duellist’s head. His power field activates and blocks some of the shots; he dodges the rest with incredible grace.
Blackgate fares a little better against the duellist, and eventually the two manage to lay down enough fire to overload his power field and a single explosive round catches him off guard – taking his head clean off. A fountain of blood erupts from the remains of his neck, showering Blackgate in an uncomfortably warm red rain. She thanks Myxodema for helping her out, but curses her luck as she wipes the blood from her optics.
They loot his overloaded power field and examine the security door. They have two melta bombs, and are preparing to use them to open the door, when the voidsmen report they are engaged with enemy kill-teams. The reports turn to panicked shouting as they call for reinforcements.
Myxodema and Blackgate come to a decision. They were risking their mission by doubling back, but they intended to keep as many flagellants and voidsmen alive too.
They pop a smoke grenade and take up defensive positions. The flagellants hide in the foliage; the voidsmen take cover and the sisters wait in location ready to strike from above.
The laser-sights of the Bowyang kill-team troopers pierce the smoke as they search for targets and threats, seeing the dead bodies of their comrades strewn about. Their mission is to extract the chief; they are well equipped for the task. Each of them carried a highly-modified hellgun with a custom grip allowing them to fire their lasgun one-handed, and some are modified to take hotshot cells whilst others are modified to have a selective-fire mode. In their left hand each kill-team trooper carried a body-length combat shield to better provide cover for their VIP and engage in vicious close-quarters station combat. They were clad head to toe in red and blue carapace armour with advanced optics in their helmets; this was not as good as the power armour the sisters had, but it was pretty close.
This would be troublesome enough, but unfortunately for them, the kill-team troopers enlisted the aid of Mindy.
Mindy was a robust and heavy track-set combat servitor. Emerging from the smoke, she carried quad-linked hydra autocannons, and her brain-cogitator interface was well suited for tracking flying and nimble targets.
They had nine voidsmen, fourteen flagellants, Cletus and the two sisters against twelve kill-team troopers and Mindy. They had little time to plan; the sisters took one look at the autocannons and concluded if Mindy opened fire for even a single round, none of them would survive. They were probably right.
The flagellants charge from the foliage; the kill-team troopers failed the roll to detect them. Some of the voidsmen lay suppressive fire down on the kill-team troopers whilst those armed with hot-shot lasguns aim at Mindy. The kill-team remains disciplined in the face of gunfire whilst Mindy is unphased by their panicked assault. One voidsman is killed in the returning fire, whilst the kill-team continues their ruthless advance.
Mindy is slow; she is last on the initiative order. Myxodema takes to the sky and passes her strength test to handle the unwieldy and heavy melta-bomb. She passes her jump pack test to see if she can close in on the combat-servitor on a proper attack-vector. She passes her ballistic skill test to see if she can throw the melta bomb at the servitor in a way the melta bomb was most definitely not designed to be used. Each time – multiple degrees of success.
The overwhelming damage tears through Mindy’s resistances and the combat servitor is wiped out in a ball of superheated melta-blast. The sororitas and the kill-team have their optics temporarily overloaded in the blast and the voidsmen and flagellants are forced to look away from the inferno.
The sororitas and the troopers recover quickly. The kill-team’s tactics change; with the loss of Mindy, they focus on reaching their boss and extracting him, unsure now if they can overcome their foes before their reinforcements arrive.
The kill-team troopers break off into many smaller fire-teams. Some engage the flagellants in CQC, keeping their allies' backs safe. Others lay down suppressive fire on the sisters, whilst others use the suppressive fire on the voidsmen. Those with hotshot hellguns take aim at suppressed targets, eliminating them one by one. Four break off and form a phalanx, trying to force their way through to the chief. The kill-team troopers are competent and their tactics are successful, if costly. They eliminate six flagellants and four voidsmen, severely wounding a fifth. One of the fireteams manages to force Myxodema out of the sky with suppressive fire, and a well-aimed hellgun shot brings her to her last two wounds.
She crash-lands on a catachan man-catcher plant. The plant engages in a contested strength contest with her and its crushing grip manages to just barely beat her power armour, bringing her down to her last wound. I tell Myxodema’s player OOC that I will lose my shit if they die to a fucking leaf.
They cut their way out. Cletus actually manages to roll well enough to heavily wound a kill-team trooper with a musket shot; the flagellants finish him off. Given that both were using primitive weapons I felt it was fair to give them both shared credit. The last kill-team troopers manage to fight their way to the chief’s door; but they are flanked by the sisters and assailed on all sides by the surviving flagellants and voidsmen.
Blackgate and Myxodema kill the last kill-trooper moments before he was about to pull the pin on his last grenade.
They waste no time placing a melta bomb and breaching a hole in the chief’s wall.
The Bowyang Chief does not attempt to run, or hide. He sits there in his leopard print briefs and his silk bathrobe, smoking an iho stick with one hand and holding a glass of fine amasec in the other. He knows at this point the game’s up.
‘Who sent you? You know what, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m a sore loser.’
The Bowyang Chief points his finger at the sisters in a finger-gun gesture.
‘Bang,’ he says, as the ring on his finger activates. The ring is a neat little piece of archaeotech, a miniature digi-las weapon. He misses the shot; Myxodema does not miss hers. Two bolter rounds hit him in his chest; they detonate, and he is nearly sawn in half by the blasts. His amasec glass smashes on the floor as his body slumps to the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes.
They claim the ring. A third of their flagellant cohort survived, less than half of the voidsmen squad, and one sister downed; it’s unknown how the others in the station have fared, but with the Bowyang Chief dead it’s over for the station.
Myxodema counts their tally; the sororitas squadron accounted for 59 confirmed kills on Bowyang troops and nobles, 34 nobles/attendants from other noble houses, and after much discussion, decided that the witch brothers counted as one despite dying twice whilst Mindy would count as a Bowyang member since they named her. Cletus accounted for 1 confirmed kill; a fine showing for Goodsprings.
From the Chief’s control room, they disable the station’s defences. More Mordaunt-aligned forces arrive to secure the station and mop up any last resistance. Bailong Station had fallen. Mission accomplished.
