Tarron Damos:Feral World Explorations

: As told by Corwyn Nilius, Astropath Transcendent
We depart the Drusus shrine world after successfully killing its Cardinal, who it turns out was actually a pirate impersonating the Cardinal for the last couple of decades, and head towards our next target.
It's a long trip, so in between one of the warp jumps Tarron tells us that he wants to go explore a local Feral World. He wants us to recover something from the planet, but won't tell us what it is -- we'll know it when we see it.  Apparently he's trying to keep it on the down-low and doesn't want people to find it.
right|Sentinel scout walker
So we take a full platoon of soldiers (so much for secrecy!) and head to the planet, with our void-master Nathan piloting one of the gunships and myself manning the second. We land with no trouble and disembark, with one of our Explorators, Haddon Cort, seated in a Sentinel (a large walker type of machine). Leaving the soldiers behind to protect the gunships we head out, choosing a direction at random.
Our brain-in-a-jar-on-spider-legs psyker, Velnoth, decides that it needs to relieve itself. So it climbs to the top of a tree and empties out some of its nasty green fluid. I can't even make this stuff up! I swear that thing is foul.
So we're heading along, with the Sentinel chainsawing down trees and clearing a path for us, when the Ork Nob (no clue what its name actually is and I have no interested in knowing, foul thing -- I have no idea why Tarron decided to let these green-skins join us) decides that it's going to yell WAAAGH! at the top of his lungs. Apparently it's some type of mating call or some-such (Orks are asexual but they release buds) and it's trying to find more of its kind. 
No green-skins yell back, but we do hear a large thumping coming from the direction of the gunships. I decide it might be wise to head back and check it out, and the Kroot (another foul thing) and our void-master Nathan decide to accompany me. The whole command crew then decides that might be a good idea, and we all head back to the gunships. The Kroot dashes forward on his own, leaving me to tend to the Kroot Beast (which I get along with surprisingly great). I decide it might be a good idea to get ready, so I use Chorus of the Righteous on our void-master Nathan and the Kroot Beast (using my new psyber-familiar to sustain it).
When we finally make it we see our soldiers fighting off a giant six-legged creature. The Kroot informs us over the micro-bead that it's a TerrorRax (or something like that -- it's hard to tell with his avian speech). It has 2 large scythes as its top-most limbs, and basically looks like a preying-mantis, but reptilian.  We're about 50 meters away.
Velnoth, the brain-in-a-jar psyker, then does something odd.  He summons a ghastly-looking tentacle appendage from himself. It looks downright heretical. Anyhow, Faux Shot our sniper takes aim and then manages to completely shoot off one of the creature's walking limbs.  The Ork Nob and even our arch-militant Liander get this crazy idea that they want to wrangle the creature, so they both charge it. The Ork Nob somehow manages to slide underneath it and using its power claw manages to shear off another of the creature's legs.
The brain-in-a-jar, Velnoth, then summons 3 ghastly tentacles. I witness dangerous psychic feedback, but surprisingly not from Velnoth. Instead it originates from the creature -- maybe it has some type of psychic resonance? Anyhow, everything mechanical near the creatures goes haywire, including all of the guns of our soldiers.
The gigantic Preying Mantis takes a mighty swing and kills all but two of our soldiers! The remaining two fortunately manage to make it back to one of the gunships. The creature follows them and then starts attacking one of our gunships, hitting one of the weapon-bearing wings. Our arch-militant Liander seems to use telekinesis (he's a sanctioned psyker!?) on the creature, but the phantom blades rebound and hit him instead.
More psychic feedback! The giant creature suddenly vanishes, and Velnoth informs us that it will be 40 seconds before the creature reappears. It seemed like perils of the warp to me, matching what I had been taught during my stay on Terra, but if Velnoth knew when it was returning then perhaps this was yet another unknown power that he used? Anyhow, our arch-militant Liander positions himself so that the creature will re-appear on his 2 swords, the Explorator Haddon Cort fixes our damaged gunship, I use Chorus of the Righteous to aid the Kroot, Ork Nob, and our arch-militant Liander, and we get ready.
That's when we hear more rustling from the tree line...
First, the gigantic Preying Mantis-like creature reappears, but it has wings and it's bright-red instead of green! We quickly figure out that it has become tainted by its 40 sec stay in the warp! Our soldiers are frightened, and indeed even some of the command crew is as well.  The arch-militant Liander suddenly realizes the predicament that he's in, and tries to slowly remove his two swords from the creature's belly... and that's when the daemon Preying Mantis sees him. It takes a swing at him, which he manages to avoid the worse of but knocking him back.
That rustling from the tree line? It's an enormous snake-like leviathan, easily towering over our gunships. It rears up and chomps down directly onto the Preying Mantis creature, chewing and then swallowing it completely.  It doesn't take long before the enormous snake-like leviathan then truns bright red. This was a truly hideous daemonic sight, and it was only my strong willpower and my faith in the God-Emperor that allowed me to remain sane (OoC note: most of the characters failed and gained Insanity).  The Kroot yells out "It's a Killian's Bane!".
Then an even more disturbing sight occurs. A small bloated warp daemon, green in hue, emerges from the tree line and does a little dance, right in front of the Killian's Bane creature. The leviathan promptly tries to tail-swipe the little green daemon, but somehow misses.
Even more psyhic phenomena. The Killian's Bane creature suddenly gets enveloped by a tear in the fabric of reality, and enormous tendrils reach out and grab hold of it, slowly pulling it down into the fabric of the warp. I had witnessed the creature rebuff our arch-militant's psyhic assault back on to him, so it was clearly psychic in some nature. I can only assume that the creature triggered some type of perils of the warp.
At least we somehow managed to remain (mostly) unscathed. But we're still no closer to finding whatever it is Tarron sent us to find.
Continued...
Category:Campaign
Category:Tarron Damos
Category:Log