Dutiful. The name of a ship lost to time - all trace of it erased from existence save for in the lowest depths of the minds of traitorous Chaos Space Marines who were aware of it during its service. It was a light cruiser that served well in the latter end of the Great Crusade, although it was once almost crippled beyond repair - yet was brought back into service after many months of great labor by the Adeptus Mechanicus on the request of the Warmaster himself, although exactly why was lost to records a long, long time ago. The truth of it was that if not for the
Dutiful placing itself between a ship that the Warmaster was aboard and an alien vessel of immense power, it is possible Horus may have been killed that day. The
Dutiful took the blow instead, and was severely damaged - while the shot it took was not destructive on a large scale, it was a precision weapon that inflicted massive damage on specific targets. The Warmasters' fleet proceeded to obliterate the alien ship, and wipe out their race, thus winning another campaign for the Great Crusade.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus space station above a planet named Icralia, the
Dutiful was being repaired. Also aboard the station, amongst the thousands of servitors, mindless machine-servants and Tech-Adepts of Mars were several dozen Space Marines - each one from either the World Eaters, Death Guard, Sons of Horus, Emperors Children or Word Bearers legion - who were to join their legions in the Isstvaan system as soon as the
Dutiful was repaired. As it happened, the ship was already late for the meeting of the Legions in the Isstvaan system when the
Dutiful's new Captain - a space marine of the Sons of Horus legion - ordered the ship to leave dock and head for the Isstvaan planets. The tech-Priests insisted that they hadn't finished repairing vital systems or intoned the rituals of repair and awakening for the
Dutiful's machine spirit - but the Captain refused to listen, and so the
Dutiful set out on its journey. Unbeknownst to its crew, it'd be the
Dutiful's last journey, and the last one for most of them, too.
The
Dutiful exited the warp close to the Isstvaan star, but its engine core suffered a catastrophic overload; causing it to explode; destroying most of the aft section of the craft, taking most of the crew - including many of the space marines - with it. With no means of propulsion, the craft was sucked into the gravitational pull of the sun, and was slowly pulled to its oblivion.
But what of the marines still alive aboard what remained of the crippled ship? You decide.
"Exiting warp now," came the weak voice of the Dutiful's
frail navigator. The unknowable view of warp-stuff disappeared - planets and starts replacing it instead. Almost instantly, the whole ship was rattled by massive shockwaves - sparks flew everywhere as instrumentation exploded causing fires all around the bridge and human serfs were thrown to the deck. Captain Tellan barely remained upon his seat, his armored hands barely keeping grip to the arm rests of his seat. "Status report?" he barked, looking around at the destruction he saw about him; the navigator had been impaled by a large pipe that had collapsed from the ceiling above, and a viscous fire was raging all around him. One of the human serfs stood at a control panel, bright-red blood trickling down his face from a gash on the side of his head. He replied in a calm tone, his psycho-conditioned brain barely registering the pain, "we've suffered severe damage - artificial atmosphere is draining from a large hull-breach.."
"Hull breach? Where?" demanded Tellan.
The serf tapped frantically at the controls in front of him. "we've lost at least half of the ship sir - the aft section is completely gone, casualty estimate at.. atleast eighty percent."
This is not good, Tellan thought; panic trying to creep its way into his mind. He forced it away, and regained his composure. "Surf, activate emergency void shielding! We have to block that breach!"
More frantic tapping. "I'm not sure we can, Captain - we've suffered too much damage to the systems."
"Damn it. Seal off sections one through five."
"Five's not responding.. void shields coming on in all other sections though.. we've got the hull breaches covered."
"Good. Now get on those fires," Tellan ordered, getting up and pulling an extinguisher off the wall and proceeding to put out the fires as best he could. Glancing over, he saw the serf was doing likewise, with pleasing success. Several minutes later, the fires were out, but klaxon's began to sound - muffled, but still audible nonetheless. "Report," the Captain asked. The serf rushed back to his station, and after a few moments he replied, "Power reserves are down to twenty-five percent.. void shielding is beginning to fail in section four."
As if on cue, the bridge door opened - pushed aside by power-armored arms. A marine entered, his armor white and blue.
"Captain! What's happened?" The Word Eater asked.
"We've suffered extreme damage - most of the ship, and crew, are gone, and power's failing."
"By the Emperor, how is this?"
"I do not know, but I feel my haste in leaving the Mechanicus station may have been.. incorrect."
"In..incorrect?" The Word Eater began, he sounded almost hysterical.
"Incorrect? How many are dead now?"
"We're still estimating," Tellan began, but he was cut off mid-sentence.
"All because of you!"
"Brother! Restrain yourself! This is not the time to start accusing people of murde-"
"Sirs!"
Both Astartes turned to look at the source of the interruption, their gaze settling upon the lone serf.
"Sirs, if I may interrupt your..conversation.. I think you should look out of the view screen."
The two Marines looked.
"The Isstvaan star," Tellan stated.
"And?" The Word Eater asked; but not anyone in particular.
"It is getting bigger," the bemused surf replied.
"No - not bigger. Closer," Tellan replied.
There was a cold silence between the three living occupants aboard the bridge, klaxon's, the hissing of gases escaping from ruptured pipes and the screeching of the hull all resounding in the background.
"How long?" The Captain asked quietly.
The serf just stared at the blazing sun for a few moments, but then he looked down at his station and began to query the computer.
When he looked up at the Captain, his expression was blank, and his voice was cold and stable.
"At our present speed towards the sun, roughly thirty hours. But as we are drawn further, the gravitational pull will increase, and we will be heading faster. We may have only twenty four hours,"
The serf paused momentarily, "or less." Right, hopefully you've got an idea of what this
RP is all about from all of the above, but if not, let me explain.
Should you choose to join, you will play as a marine character, created by you (as usual for a
RP), from one of the five previously mentioned legions. The idea is they all have roughly 24 hours until they are destroyed by the Isstvaan star, and you will decide what your character is going to try and do until then. Will he try to signal for help? Escape? Will he work with his brother marines, or will he try and save himself? Will he remain loyal, or will he turn to the Dark Gods for his salvation, and if so, will he try and kill or convert his brothers? That's up to you.
I will be the
GM, but will also play as Captain Tellan. Don't let the title fool you, he's no space marine captain, just captain of the ship (at present). He's pretty much just a standard marine from the Sons of Horus who knows a fair bit about ships and is under orders to get the
Dutiful to Horus' fleet with the other space marines who were aboard the Mechanicus outpost. Not that that's likely to happen now though.
Here's the pre-heresy colour schemes of the five legions you can pick from:
Word Bearers
Sons of Horus (actually light greenish colour, hard to see from image
IMO)
World Eaters
Emperors Children
Death Guard
Whoops! Forgot the form!
Name:
Age:
Legion:
Personality:
Equipment:
Rank:
Appearance:
For "Rank", no Captains or such, Veterans are the highest kind of rank your character may have. For appearance, a picture really isn't necessary (unless you have a converted mini!), just describe him, and we know what they mostly look like from the armor colours.
Here's Tellan's profile that I'll be using:
Name: Ralkar Tellan
Age: 267
Legion: Sons of Horus
Personality: Sometimes impatient, he has a history of making quick decisions that hasn't always ended well, although he is an overly capable combatant and well-learned man, having studied on a great many topics in his free time. He welcomes the company of his brothers, and always looks out for his friends (not that that means he doesn't look out for all the rest of his brother-marines!) and can be relied on to get the job done, however his haste has kept him back from promotion to a sergeant for decades. He is highly self-conscious of what others think of him, however, and it doesn't take a great deal to provoke him, despite his usually good, calm composure.
Equipment: Boltgun, Mk 4 power armour, power sword, Frag and Krak grenades, combat blade
Rank: First company veteran
Appearance: Fair skin, with long black hair that flows down to his shoulders. No real defining features on his face.
