Thanks guys! So as it turns out, they want me in the office
tomorrow so all this weekend I needed to get ready and buy some decent clothes (I only have a couple decent button shirts xD )… This also included friggin ties! Ughhhhhhhhhh…… *Ramos rarely wears button shirts, let alone ties*
Though, the old saying goes "dress for the job you want," eh? Gotta mesh with the rest of the upper professionals!
Gonna be interesting having to actually wake up early now. Real fast change from staying up til 4 and sleeping til 10.
@Gir: Oh trust me, Im definitely gonna keep painting! (Just not as much now
) Pretty sure
WM would suffocate under all his unpainted stuff if I didnt take some off his hands every so often xD
@
WM: Yeah I'm gonna need to head straight into downtown Cleveland. The office is actually right next to the Rock Hall of Fame. I really lucked out, cause the woman who hired me is actually completely willing to carpool (I didn't even suggest it,
she did!, which is the crazy thing!) Then I'm planning on taking the light rail system back home. Honestly couldn’t have planned this all out better!
I mean eventually, I'll get an actual car… but in the mean time, I'm perfectly content with public transport
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So Deathwatch!
**Warning- Wall o' text sighted!**
Our group has been playing since February, but only Bi-weekly. Not sure if it's a common case with the game as a whole, but maaaaaan do we level up slow! We only hit level two last month!
I suppose this is due to how the xp is calculated in regards to the rest of the
40k RPG books. This is something I actually really like about the system, as you can blend them as much as you want! If you want to play a Space Marine in Rogue Trader? Done! Just remember you're gonna be insanely
OP! Guardsman in Deathwatch? Well, sure… I guess it's possible. Don’t know why youd ever want to though- you're gonna die FAST… xD
The level adjustment for Space Marines makes them somewhere around level 14 or something as far as the squishier characters go (they give you an actual number, but I cbf to hunt down the book xD ) So that’s prolly it.
Anyways…
Our Kill Team is primarily composed of 4 marines: Apothecary Cestus of the Ultramarines, Techmarine Lortek (who speaks for the Machines) of the Novamarines, Brother Saarlac- Tactical Marine of the Iron Hands, and Nero- Blackshield Assault Marine of the Deathwatch. Later we would be joined by Sir Gawain of the Black Templars, another Tactical Marine.
For sake of narrative convenience, I'm just gonna jump ahead and cover our latest mission, still in progress.
The planet Adrian's Respite is a distant (rumored) Maiden world which has been isolated by warp storms for centuries, and was once the site of a secret Mechanicus facility. Recent reports from the region have revealed that the storms have begun to subside, and the Kill Team has been dispatched to recover any lost technologies, including a certain "artifact". Given naught but the vaguest data on the Artifact, time was of the essence. News was spreading fast of the potential lost treasures, and the planet would soon be swarming with scavengers.
Due to limited resources and the remoteness of the location, not to mention the time-sensitive nature of the mission, the team needed to seek passage on a Rogue Trader vessel. They were given a large crate of supplies as well as sufficient credits with which to "convince" the captain to give them passage. He did so with little coercion, as who can say no to the Emperor's own Angels of Death?
Naturally the Marines had no issues with the crew. Most were too terrified of the superhumans to even come near. Ever distrustful of those outside the Astartes, Nero had Lortek tap into the ship systems. A Techmarine without peer, he had no issues conversing with the ancient machine spirit, secretly keeping tabs on the operations. All of a sudden, he noticed another intruder and tracked his position to an ancient, seldom-used section of the ship.
[The GM at this stage had severely underestimated the Tech-Use skill of Lortek, who had specialized in that field. A normal test will have you testing against 60 or so (you have to roll lower than your stat). Lortek was testing on a 95 Every 10 points you roll under your target counts as an additional degree of success. He rolled a 04, meaning 9 degrees! What was supposed to be an investigation of strange events on the ship was now a manhunt. ]
Moving swiftly, lest their quarry escape, the marines made their way into the dark catacombs of the vessel. Even the captain was unfamiliar with this section, as decades had passed since the areas use. Again, the Techmarine would prove his worth as he pulled out his Auspex and immediately pinpointed the intruder, cutting off hours of searching!
Bursting into a large room, the killteam is set upon by half a dozen servitors which had been modified for close combat. Also in the room were a pair of heavy industrial servitors built for carrying large freight. The target was nowhere in sight!
Fast forward through a little combat and during a lull in the battle, Lortek does another scan which indicates that the servitor command signal is coming from one floor below. The Assault Marine, Nero, makes short work of the floor, the severed scything talon he carries as a weapon biting into the steel like a power sword. He drops into the halls below as the remaining servitors are eliminated by his team.
More servitors are there to greet him, as is the target: an emaciated figure covered in cabling and cybernetics, clad in the vestments of a tech priest.
[In a previous mission, we had discovered a rivalry between two sects of Tech priests. Not Dark Mechanicus, but something just as sinister… This storyline is still being developed by the GM so that’s all I know!]
Nero carves through the servitors as if they were nothing, the talon and his chainsword making quick work of them. Igniting his jetpack he dashes through the last servitor, just in time for the Priest to escape through a ventilation duct.
[For a scrawny guy he was particularly speedy!]
Regrouping, Lortek again turns to his auspex. It doesn’t take long to find him again, and this time he cant escape. He is disabled non-lethally, but initiates a purge of his cybernetic implants in order to attempt to conceal his identity. That’s when Apothecary Cestus and Lortek show off their training. Between the two of them they are able to recover a decent chunk of the priest's memory, though it needs decryption.
Upon reaching the planet, countless scavenger and mercenary ships take off from the Rogue Trader ship, including the captains personal runabout flown by the Marines. They aim to land close to the old Mechanicus base entrance (despite numerous Ork encampments in the area), but are suddenly fired upon by a curious shimmering form in the air. Their ship is damaged, but able to land relatively safely. Inspection of the craft reveals that only the engines were damaged- hit in the perfect spots to disable them and them alone. It was no Ork weapon that hit them… Only the Eldar can be so precise!
With the ship unable to be repaired, Nero rigs it to explode, not wanting any of its technology to fall into Ork hands. It detonates, and the team begins the several kilometer trek to the base. Lortek acts as a navigator, utilizing his Auspex once more. The group walks deeper and deeper into the arid lands when it is attacked by an unseen enemy. A series of metallic twangs and a number of warning runes are the only indication of enemy fire as Nero's jump pack is hit. The fuel ignites, destroying the pack, but barely damaging the marine. Saarlac and Cestus return fire, killing a couple of the enemy gunmen.
As they retreat, the snipers take several more shots before vanishing entirely. Curiously, the shots are focused on the more armored sections of their armor. It's almost as if the Eldar are trying to lure the marines deeper into the forests…
They narrowly avoid detection by an armored company of orks (who are assumed to be heading to the lander crash site), and soon discover the remains of a massive capital ship which is currently being looted by the greenskins. Oddly enough, a Deathwatch transponder signal is coming from inside the armored aft section of the wreck
[what is now essentially a fortress]. As it turns out, the ship is carrying a high-ranked member of the Imperial Church- someone with enough clout to command a
DW marine in his entourage! Enter Sir Gawain of the Black Templars.
[New players are always an issue in RPGs. It's so hard to figure out how to integrate them smoothly Seems this worked out rather well!]
Here's where their luck with sneaking around the Orks wears off. Thanks to Lortek's armor (whose randomly generated history gave it a proud and boisterous personality… so he sucks at sneaking around!), the group is spotted as they attempt to regroup with Sir Gawain, and the orks engage.
The majority of the orks start shooting (including a group of Lootas on the other side of the field), and the marines rush to enter the wreck. The plan is to pop out at points on the exterior and take out the enemy threat posed to the crash survivors. Nero, however, breaks off from the rest of the group and proceeds to climb one of the fortress walls, assaulting the entrenched orks in order to distract them from his comrades.
He strikes down a Nob as soon as he comes over the top of the wall, and starts hacking up Boyz. Meanwhile the other marines are shooting out of the main entrance, annihilating orks left and right…
And that’s when the Kans started to appear. Right away things look grim when a pair of them open fire with big shootaz and deal a good bit of damage to Lortek. The foremost of the mechs managed to close into melee with the marines, and hit both Lortek and Saarlac with giant buzzsaws.
Seeing his squad in trouble, Nero breaks away from the Boyz on top of the wall. While not as maneuverable as he normally is without his jump pack, a string of lucky dice rolls has him run across the fortress walls, leaping down to land on the back of the rearmost Kan, planting a Meltabomb on the giant walker. Everyone manages to run to safety… except Saarlac, who fails his agility test to run through the rubble!
The remaining Kan (and a chunk of the fortress wall) is engulfed in a miniature sun as the melta weapon detonates, and unfortunately the Iron Hands marine is caught in the blast. It is only through the grace of the Emperor that he survives, though significantly more charred than before.
[In Deathwatch, you are given a number of Fate Points which can be temporarily spent to reroll a bad roll or instantly take a 10 when rolling initiative. They can be permanently burned in order to avoid death, but your character is out of commission for a while as he heals up.]
The orks retreat, and Apothecary Cestus patches up the two wounded marines as best as he can. We place a call to the ship in orbit and get them to send down a shuttle, into which we load the VIP and other survivors of the crash, as well as the Heavily Wounded Saarlac. The mission will need to go on without him.
Next session: We get to the base… and all the goodies inside!
Wowza that was a lot… hope you guys don’t mind wading through that
Hopefully I'll be able to keep playing, but who knows. New job takes priority!
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No further progress on the flyers, mostly cause Im stuck right now. I need to add yellow and black to it, but have no clue where to put it.
The Razorbacks I have already painted have simple yellow bands at the front and back, like so:
Problem with this is that the Raven is much, much bigger and has the wings and tail to worry about!
To this end, I did some VERY quick and dirty photoshopping. This is really just one chunk of ideas, and really I think that this many stripes and junk might be too much.
I'd greatly appreciate you guys' input!