You nod somberly, “The Oath of the Astartes then. We come from three chapters to find and recover members of a fourth…”

You each make your oath, witnessed by the other two members of the squad. With it comes a certain bond of fellowship, irrespective of chapter affiliation. A shared sense of purpose, of unity.

Mission Cohesion: 9 (5 from fellowship, 1 from ranks in the Command skill, 2 from Oath of the Astartes, 1 from Favored Son skill)

Mission Type: Recon (Search and Secure).

Your objective is one of Reconnaissance and Recovery: Find the extent of The Macedonian, recover any Space Marines you find aboard her (living or dead), and return to the Void Hab. You will be operating in part in unknown, unmapped sections of the Capitalis Congestus. Places where your three hundred years of experience and service as a Scout-Sargent will come in handy, even if you don't know the exact terrain or opposition. Such is often the lot of the Scout: to go and find the conditions on the ground and the nature of the foe.

Tactics roll: Recon and Stealth.Success! Needed <44, got 25. Calamity and Foe Type rolls reduced by 20% for the duration of the mission.

Mission 2: Black Vanguard

Type: Reconnaissance and Recovery

Primary objective: scout the wreck of The Macedonian

Primary objective: Recover any and all Space Marine relics and / or remains found.

Tertiary Objective: Eliminate any targets of opportunity encountered.

Personal (Bonus) Objective: Trial - Survive the mission without burning a fate point.

You lead the kill-team out of the Void-Hab and through the Lonely Drifter to the bow of the Unflagging Resolve. It is an easy path, one you have walked before. Gorlin knows it too, and has no trouble keeping up. Hagrdict takes his cue from you and Gorlin, treating the area as mostly, but not completely, clear. A glory-hound, you decide, but not one so foolish as to refuse the lessons of others.

When you reach to prop of the Unflagging Resolve, you find that you have a bit of an issue. You are back at the same hangar bay that you crossed previously, and it’s still having problems. The launch catapults are still ‘shut down’, and the refueling servitors are still wandering aimlessly. The acrid reek of unburnt promethium fills the air, and you know you need to step cautiously. Promethium is used as fuel for every Imperial vehicle you know of, and is commonly gelled to be used as flamer ammunition. Here it has leaked from the tanks of the refueling servitors to hand thick in the air, potentially turning the entire hangar bay into a giant fuel-air explosive. And if it does detonate, it will take the entire prow of the Unflagging Resolve with it.

“Lingering here is not an option, nor is creating any sort of spark. Gorlin, you remember the exit?”

“Hreh. Wonder if the bodies are still there?”

“Given the scavengers in this place, probably not. Go quickly, but watch your footing.”

Gorlin ‘shrugs’ his pauldrons and takes a moment to eye the path through the wandering servitors. Satisfied, he takes off in a quick-footed jog. It nearly ends in disaster when he is halfway across the hangar bay: a refueling servitor stumbles over something and tumbles into his path. Gorlin vaults the ungainly pile of rotting flesh and metal with ease and joogs to the exit.

“Rrrgh. Made it, exit secure for now. And you were right Marcellus. Bloodstains, but no bodies.”

“Affirmative Gorlin. Hagredict, your turn. Same exit, pathing at your discretion.”

“Confirmed Marcellus. Sigismund, guide my steps…”

Hagrdict takes a moment longer to study the paths of the wandering servitors. Eventually, he spots a gap in their pathing. Nimbly he clambers up on top of a large pipe and teeter-totters along its length. He would be horribly exposed were there any foes around, but a single shot would blow the whole bay up and kill you all anyway, so it doesn't really matter. He makes it to the exit and joins Golrin.

“On station Marcellus.”

“Confirmed Hagrdict. On my way.”

Walk/Jog through the hangar bay without causing sparks: -10% Agility test.

Failure! Needed <34, got 50.

You start out weaving between servitors, but something catches your trailing foot. You spin around to keep your footing and see a refueling servitor heading for a ragged gap in the deck. Knowing that the fall of the servitor is inevitably going to cause some sparks, you can only run and hope as the inevitable unfolds behind you.

Run out of the hangar bay before it explodes!: +0% Agility test.

Success! Needed <44, got 19.

“Gorlin! Hagrdict! Move!” You dive through the exit hatch, slam your hand onto the emergency seal button, breaking it in the process, and keep running. Moments later you can hear the rumbling Thoom of an explosion, followed by more Booming sounds as secondary and collateral detonations engulf the entirety of the hangar bay. A shockwave tosses you head over ceramite-plated tea kettle through a bulkhead and into something that is a mixture of armor-hard plates and squishy flesh. Your boot impacts something the gives out a Squelch and something else gives out a terrified squeal. You shake your head, orient yourself, and assess your situation.

“Gorlin, I found the bodies.”

“Hreh? How?”

“Let us say that I’m going to need to rinse off next chance I get.”

“Freh! Foot-first, huh?”

“Ass-first. My foot found the scavengers. Grots from the stain on the bottom.” You can hear Gorlin start to laugh before he cuts the vox-link.

“Leave the line open and we’ll come to you Marcellus.” You can tell that Hagrdict wants to laugh, but is stifling it with a fair degree of success.

“Affirmative Hagrdict.” They find you in short order, still picking grot teeth out of your boot. Having regrouped, you lead the way deeper into the Capitals Congestus.

Two and a half hours later at the stern of the Unflagging Resolve you come across a set of stubborn auto-bulkheads. The first of three is stuck with only a sliver of space open. Peering through the gap, you can see a second one behind it. It looks to be some sort of airlock setup, probably for damage control purposes. Unfortunately it stands in your way, and you don’t think you can get it powered up and working again.

You take a moment to consult with your team. “We have two doors that I can see in our way. We have enough of a gap to try and force the door open with brute strength, or we could blast it down with krak grenades. If we do that, it will take two or three grenades per door to make a breach. Opinions?”

Gorlin’s pauldrons whined. “Grr. I’d say breach and have done with, but we’ve only nine Krak grenades with us. Three per door would leave us short should we need them.”

Hagrdict nods, “trying our strength first costs us nothing, so why not try?”

You nod, “I’ll go low, Hagredict goes high. Gorlin, overwatch please.”

They nod and you set top the task. The gap is just wide enough to fit your gauntleted fingers through. You flex them and get a good grip on the auto-bulkhead. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“On three. One, two, three!”

Force open the Auto-Bulkhead: -10% Strength test.

Success! Needed <63, got 06.

You and Hagrdict haul and the auto-bulkhead gives way with the terrible screech of tearing metal. It slammed back into the frame and stays there, the servos that drove it utterly destroyed by the abuse you put them through. The next door is jammed in a slightly more open position. You and Hagrdict set up to try again.

Force open the Auto-Bulkhead: -10% Strength test.

Success! Needed <63, got 09.

The second auto-bulkhead crumples like a used ration wrapper under your and Hagrdict’s combined efforts. Gorlin strides through it and breaks into a charge before you can pick yourself from the deck. As you roll to your feet, you see the severed head of a mutated once-man, a lost soul of a man: perhaps once a crewman of one of the ships now a part of the hulk, bounce past you. Another lost soul tries to run past you, but Hagrdict grabs its head in one fist and smashes it to paste against the deck. You come to your feet, bolter drawn and ready, in time to see two more lost souls dive into a vent and flee the fight. By the time you enter the small maintenance area (and duck under a hanging light fixture) the fight, such as it was, is already over. Hagrdict looks set to climb into the vent after the fleeing lost souls, with Gorlin holding him back.

“Dammit Flesh Tearer! Let me after them! Suffer not the Mutant to live!”

“Grrh! Not letting you get killed for nothing!”

“Dammit Hagrdict! The fight is over, the ghilliam are dead, and we have a mission to complete! Besides, I do not think that you would fit into the vents in your Power Armor.”

“Damn you...”

Cohesion Challenge: Squad infighting!

Success! needed <=8 on 1d10, got 3.

You cut of Hagrdict’s tirade before it can start. “Are you going to Hold your Oath and stay on mission? Or are you going to go Renegade on a personal Crusade?”

“Rrrr…”

“Gorlin, let him go. Hagrdict, rein it in for now. This is a Recon mission, not a Cleanse operation. That will come in time, but we have neither the firepower nor the information we need to mount it now.”

“Affirmative, Alpha-One.”

“Good. Keep it tight and watch the corners, we are headed ‘north-east’ from the Unflagging Resolve, which may put us into a Chaos ship. If it does, we punch through to the ‘north’, do not stop moving. Gorlin, on point. Hagrdict, in the middle, I will take the rear.”

Sure enough you come to the unholy rune encrusted hull of the chaos ship. As you step gingerly through a great rent in its armored hide, you can’t help but note how thin its armor is. An Imperial warship of three kilometers or more in length would be a cruiser at least, and carry between fifteen and twenty meters of adamantium-class armor plating, with at least as much common battlesteel for backing. This chaos ship only carries ten meters of armor plating and another fifteen of backing. Which would make it one of the very old grand cruisers, ships at least fifteen millenia old before the vagaries of warp travel are accounted for. Ships built to be flagships for fast-moving Predation Fleets, swift hunters of foes.

Squad Mode Activated: Tactical Spacing Engaged. 8 Cohesion remains.

You shake off your musings. “Arlight squad. We’re moving ‘north’ through this wretched mess. Watch your spacing and keep the pace up.”

“Alpha-three confirms.”

“One Speed Preacher.”

Gorlin leads off, setting a pace that would be punishing for any un-modified human. Hagrdict easily keeps pace and you hustle to catch up. The three of you are making a fair bit of noise now, but you are happy to trade stealth for speed if it means avoiding any more daemons. You can hear the scuttle of small vermin and fearful mutants as they flee your footsteps. Hagrdict looks ready to smash the first thing that crosses his path, but Gorlin is in the lead and would take first contact. None comes, even as you spend two hours traversing the width of the Chaos ship and a further eight navigating the tangled labyrinth of wreckage of an ork ship at F3.

That peace is broken as you navigate ‘north-east’ through the Tisiphone. You are in a machine shop of some sort, the floor scattered with the remains of broken equipment and shards of bone. Your foes spring from their hiding-places, their strikes fast enough to befuddle and disembowel a human. They aren’t nearly fast enough to surprise a Space Marine.

Identify Foes: +20% Perception test. +20% for Autosenses.

Success! Needed <88, got 49.

You act first, spotting three ghilliam and a hullghast as they emerge from cover. Your bolter is already in your hands and firing. The hullghast is the most dangerous of the targets before you with its combination of toxic claws and bite, both of which are more than capable of marking even Power Armor, and its brutal berserker charge.

Single shot from Bolter (magazine #1 - Standard Bolts): +0% to hit. Magazine is now at 27/28 rounds. Range is short: +10% to hit. Target is obstructed (friendlies in the way): -10% to hit.

Fire at hullghast: Success! needed <53, got 51.

Damage inflicted: 2d10+5 explosive. Result: 25.

Critical Hit! A damage die rolled a 10: inflict a further 2d10+5 damage. Result: 43 total damage done to target.

Your bolt obliterates the hullghast’s torso, leaving only a pile of bloody gibs on the deck.

Hagrdict is almost as quick on the trigger, cratering the chest of one of the ghilliam before it can touch him.

Another Ghilliam gets to Gorlin, but he laughs as he easily parries its clumsy strike and takes its right arm off in return. It dies on the floor, clutching the stump where its shoulder used to be.

Gorlin wheels around to meet the charge of the last ghillian and parries its attack with ease. This is only possible because you and Hagrdict have spaced yourselves properly, giving Gorlin all the room he needs to brawl without restraint.

Single shot from Bolter (magazine #1 - Standard Bolts): +0% to hit. Magazine is now at 26/28 rounds. Range is short: +10% to hit. Target is obstructed (friendlies in the way): -10% to hit. Target is in melle: -20% to hit.

Fire at ghilliam: Success! needed <33, got 32.

Damage inflicted: 2d10+5 explosive. Result: 16.

Your shot connects with the last ghilliam in the room, amputating its right leg at the knee. It collapses to the deck in a mewling, miserable wreck and bleeds out in the few moments it takes for the spent shell to stop rattling around in the corner of the room. Hagrdict glances at the bodies, nods in your direction, and holsters his bolter. He doesn’t say anything, but you can tell that he no longer has any concerns with your willingness to fight the foes of mankind. You nod for Gorlin to lead the way again, and your team is moving before the bodies even have a chance to cool.

Within twenty minutes you are ducking beneath the twin two-hundred meter engine exhausts of The Macedonian and walking deep into her lower decks. These are the cramped and crowded places where officers never tread and honest crew fear to go. A place where bilge-rats rule and mech-wright lead maintenance crews go armed. These ill-used spaces oft became the shipboard refuge of the outcast, the stowaway, and the unclean; a veritable catacomb-undercity in space.

So it is an incredible surprise when you find a black-marked door some six hours later. The remains of a trio of servitor-manned defensive turrets guard the approach, and the cogwheel icon of the Adeptus Mechanicus stands next to the Helm-wheel of the Imperial Navy and the ship’s crest of The Macedonian. You pause, your brow furrowing, and call out to your team, “I think we just found the Ship’s Archive.”

“What? Say again Hunter”

“Greh?”

“No Idea what it is doing down here, but I can’t think of any other reason for a servitor-turret guarded door and the combination of ship’s crest, Adeptus Mechanicus, and Imperial Navy iconography.”

“Sounds propper, I’m just astonished that it is down here in the catacombs instead of on the bridge or down by the main plasma drive.”

“Hreh. probably because if either of those are destroyed, it would destroy the archive too. “

“That seems to be the logic at work here, though I would have expected a mid-deck location, not a low deck one. Do either of you have at least a passing familiarity with the Rites of Data Retrieval?”

“Negative Hunter, only the basics of data-slate operation and the like.”

“Hrgh. Same.”

“Alright, cover me while I work then.” You kneel down to reach the lock on the door. It would be perhaps chest-high for a human, but that means that it is waist high for you. It is a complex padlock and thirteen-digit combination lock mechanism which you have no hope of picking or guessing the code to. You trace the hasp of the lock and find that it loops through a set of catch-points on both sides of the hatch. A difficult setup to bypass, but one that will only deter the most trivial of forced entries. Presumably what the servitor-guns were meant to prevent. You snap the lock off the door with barely a grunt of effort, and pick the hasp from the catch-points. You push the door open and step inside to find a single cogitator terminal atop a bare steel table and a heavily reinforced data-vault.

A black cursor binks in the sea-green display of the terminal, waiting for something to be typed into the keyboard. The human-sized keyboard. You gingerly hold a finger over one of the keys and study it. Your finger is nearly twice the width of one of the keys, so you will be forced to poke directly downward at the keys with a single finger fully extended, hitting one key at at time.

Unseal the data-vault: -10% Tech-use test.

Success! Needed <34, got 21.

You hunt-and-peck at the keyboard, thanking the Emperor that the backspace key is easy enough to hit as you have to delete several errant keystrokes. Sone eight and a half minutes later you have entered the command >Unseal ship_archive. You hit the XQT key to activate the command and hope. The data-vault responds with the quiet shusssssh of equalizing atmosphere and vents wisps of chilled nitrogen gas into the room. You lift the cover and lift the infocasket from the data-vault by the singular handle on its top surface. A rectangular box, as wide as your outstretched fingers, as long and tall as your forearm, and some twenty-five kilograms in weight. You heft it easily in one hand, you bolter in the other.

“Task complete. Move onwards my brothers.”

“Hrgh. Took you long enough.”

“It takes as long as it takes Ravager. Better to be slow and sure then fast and wrong.”

“Greh. If you say so.”

“Hagrdict, Take point for the next section, Gorlin to cover the rear.”

“Trrgh. That will put you between me and the fight.”

“I’ll worry about that Gorlin, just make sure nothing attacks us from behind.”

“Feh.”

“Hagrdict, lead on.”

Nine hours later and Hagrdict leads the party clear of the labyrinthine catacombs and into the mid-decks of The Macedonian. You estimate your position as somewhere near the middle of the ship, probably near the root of the spire holding the bridge and the officer’s quarters on the upper decks. This impression is reinforced as Hagrdict continues to lead you upwards, climbing into that spire. Three hours of searching later brings you to a set of quarters near to the armory and a storage room that has been converted into a training area. Hagrict pauses and considers the training room for a moment, before clicking open the vox, “We may have found something.”

“Rrgh. ‘May Have’?”

“The training room seems improvised, all of the equipment enlarged and reinforced. And there is a large cleared area in the middle of the room. Much the same as it would be in a sparring ring. Sized for Space Marines.”

“Hrgh?”

“Hagrdict is right, this is where the Imperial Fist squad would have trained and rested. Twelve hatches between here and the armory: enough rooms for a full squad with two to spare. Take four rooms each to search, and keep aware in case of ambush.”

“Confirmed Hunter. Ravager, do you want near end, middle, or far end?”

“Ergh. Near end. Hunter?”

“I’ll take the middle four.”

Search the Rooms: +20% Perception test. +20% for Autopsenses.

Success! Needed <88, got 57.

You find nothing of value because there is little of interest to be found. Small stacks of memento mori, vials of lapping and polishing solutions, a few tins of yellow paint for Power Armor. “Hunter to team, I have a whole lot of nothing here. What fortune?”

“Hrgh. Preacher, you got anything? If not, join me in the room to the left of the Armory.”

“On my way Ravager.”

You hurry out of the room to join Gorlin and Hagrdict in the indicated room. Right away you can tell that this room is different. A small altar has been set up at one end, a ring in the dust marking where the icon is missing. An empty bracket for a squad banner is set into the back wall. But most importantly, a stack of dusty tomes sits in front of the altar; bound in blackened leather, embossed with the yellow-gold fist icon of the Imperial Fists.

“Codices?” You tap the small crystal datacrypt where it hangs from your cingulum at you waist. “Copies of the Codex Astartes?”

“A Chaplain’s copy, plus his recorded musings upon them, made available for the squad to read during prayer or meditation. They would not have been left behind lightly.”

“Hrgh. Thought so. We’re bringing these home then. Preacher, you should be the one to handle these, I’ll see if there’s anything in the armory we can use as a suitable container.”

Gorlin returns a short while later, bearing a selection of empty box magazines. Each is big enough to hold a single tome, perhaps two if they are squeezed in tightly. Hagrdict lays them out and reverently loads each into its own improvised container. That done, he mag-locks them to his back, before kneeling before the altar for a moment of prayer. You look at Gorlin, and he holds his tongue as Hagrdict murmurs a prayer for the departed Imperial Fists, asking their forgiveness for disturbing the altar. You are not one for religion, having seen where blind zealotry can lead all to often when putting down rebellious and outright heretical worlds, but each man in your squad, you included has their own brand of faith.

Gorlin knows the heated fury of close-quarters-combat, of blood and blade and death, and has little patience for simple words. Deeds are the most important thing to him, brotherhoods forged in the fires of combat.

You know the Codex Astartes as the guiding wisdom of Primarch Guilliman, passed down for millenia. Its is not a holy book, nor are the guiding wisdoms within it absolute, but they form the entire backbone for your life: from your selection as a youth on Ardium, to the lessons taught you as an aspirant, the trials as you became a scout, the manner in which you fought and adapted as a battle-brother of the line, and the lessons you have passed on as a scout-sergeant for the past three hundred years the Codex had been a constant guide and companion. You have learned to see beyond its tenants, to know when to bend them or even break them outright as the situation demands, reality never conforms to the lessons of the classroom after all, but they serve as an excellent guide and offer a broad selection of solutions to most of the problems you have faced.

Hagrdict follows the Codex Astartes, as interpreted by Sigismund, on a more fervent level. It is not quite religion, but the Codex plays a much more active role in his life then they do in yours. Reinforced with the knightly traditions of the Black Templars, Hagrdict’s actions may appear to be mildly religious in nature, but you know a little more. Honor plays a large part in the life of a Black Templar, and it is no small slight to disrupt the works of a fellow warrior, particularly the works of a fellow battle-brother, and especially the works of a Chaplain or senior officer. Hagrdict’s prayer is made to ask their forgiveness and to apologise for the slight, to explain the need which brings him to do it. It is a vocalization of the rationalization in his mind, but it is important to him.

When Hagrdict is done, you let Gorlin take the lead again, searching the bow of The Macedonian. You sense the impatience in his stride, the eagerness to be done with this mission after nearly forty hours. You know that picking a new path back through the Capitalis Congestus will likely take another twenty hours, perhaps more, even if you don’t stop to investigate anything or encounter any serious obstructions.

An hour later and your team is passing a medical triage post. Bones are heaped in the corners where the dead were unceremoniously dumped to make room for those who might live. Leaned in one corner is a dead Imperial Fist; his helmet is missing and you can see a pair of service studs embedded next to the gaping hole in his skull. His weapons are gone, taken by his battle-brothers to continue the fight in which he died.

“Objective located. Gorlin; overwatch. Hagrdict; help me find something to carry our dead battle-brother”

It turns out you have nothing better to hand then your climbing harness once again, so the unknown battle brother ends up strapped to your back. You secure his skull with a rope going into the wound that killed him and out through the foramen magnum, the opening for the spinal column.

With that grim task completed, you direct Gorlin to lead off ‘west’ and ‘south-west’ back to the Visitor. All three of you are on the ragged edge of almost-fatigue after so long in the field, and so pay only the most basic attention to your surroundings: you are looking for threats, not more things to investigate. You make note of the ship of unknown providence in D1, and the Nova-class Adeptus Astartes Frigate at C2, but have neither the energy nor the carrying capacity to investigate them properly. You finally return to your void-hab base some forty-seven hours after you left it.

You have a bit of down time before your next mission. Time enough to rest up, polish out the scratches in your wargear, and perhaps improve yourself.

Mission 2: Black Vanguard completed

Stockpile Update:

887 rounds of 0.75 caliber bolt ammunition. Suitable for bolters and bolt pistols. 136 rounds of 0.75 caliber Hellfire bolt ammunition. Suitable for bolters and bolt pistols.

Specialist rounds for special targets; Hellfire Ammunition bypasses all natural or organic armor, and liquefies the target from the inside out.

12x frag AP grenades, hand throwable. 13x krak AT grenades, hand throwable. 80x units of armor repair cement, for patching armor breaches in the field. Enough combat rations to feed your squad for eleven weeks.

Rewards: The Marks of Duty

Primary objective completed: +350 XP Primary objective completed: +350 XP Tertiary objective completed: +75 XP +1 Renown: Completed all primary objectives +1 Renown: Completed all tertiary objectives +1 Renown: Completed personal objective +1 Renown: Recovered dead Imperial Fist Space Marine +2 Renown: Recovered the Ship’s Archive of The Macedonian +6 Renown: Recovered a stash of Ancient Lore (Codex Astartes)

Current Level: 1 (out of 8)

Current Renown: 17 (out of 100) - Deathwatch Initiate