Tarron Damos:Feral World Explorations - Part 5

: As told by Corwyn Nilius, Astropath Transcendent
While Faux Shot is being looked after, Captain Karnius Veer orders a feast to be held in our honor. We attend that night, but I learn later than Thanius started to realize that things are very wrong. For instance if this colony was out of communication with the rest of the Imperium for over 1000 years then how could they know about Saint Drusus (who lived 500 years ago)? So during the feast Thanius asks to use the restroom, and he then starts to kill every local denizen that enters the restroom (unbeknownst to the rest of us).
Meanwhile our Rogue Trader Tarron Damos is attempting to communicate with us since we're not responding via vox cast. So he asks the members of the Astropathic Choir to reach out to us. In doing so, the astropaths figure out that we're under some type of mental influence, but not one that is psychic in nature. Upon learning this Tarron orders a flight of bombers to level the area around the tower with plasma bombs, hoping that the massive electromagnetic backlash will free us from our mental stupor.
I'm completely oblivious to all of this, and I pass my time trying to charm some of the toga-wearing priestesses we saw earlier (to no avail alas). After I'm done embarrassing myself our navigator O'hann comes up to me and tells me that this isn't right. He's making no sense, so I ask him to speak coherently. "Speak High Gothic, man!" I tell him. He doesn't like my attitude and starts slinging crass words at me, while telling me that "my people" made astro-telepathic contact with him -- which isn't even remotely possible.
We're getting nowhere fast, and then I notice my nose is bleeding. I reach out with my senses, and then I finally sense it. My specialist squad of astropaths has been attempting to make contact with me but their message comes in as barely a whisper. Something is attempting to jam their signal. In any case they quickly relay that we're all under some type of hypnosis, likely chemical in nature, that our Rogue Trader Tarron Damos has seen a wing of bombers to our location, and that the only safe place is near the Spire at the center of the city.
I use Thought Sending to tell the rest of the command crew that Tarron will be carpet-bombing the city and that we need to leave NOW, but discreetly, and to head to the Spire. I duck out through a side entrance and make my way to the street.
Once there I see that the others got my message and are also heading towards the Spire. By this point it's hard to be discreet, and in any case our dark eldar Necro had always been watched by guards. When we finally reach the Spire we're practically jogging, and the guards located there head in our direction. I decide to Compel the guards, and 11 of them run away with the rest of them looking confused at the sudden reaction in their companions.
That's about when we start hearing, seeing, and feeling the bombers. Their plasma bombs quickly reduce entire buildings to ash. More importantly, the bombs' massive ionization of the air allows us to see through the mirage. We see clearly for the first time, and we notice that we're not in a beautiful-yet-primitive city but rather in a crude quarry. All about us we see people working the mine, under a similar type of hypnosis (or waking up from it, like us). That vision I had seen earlier was not in fact a post-apocalypic scene, but rather the miners that had been shambling around going about their drudgery!
We take stock of where the bombers are and decide to make a break for it, running back towards our gunships that are still located in the forest.  Once we're clear we can hear that Tarron Damos is commencing an orbital bombardment of the "city". On the way back to the gunships Thanius and Liander join us, as well as Faux Shot (who recovered from his coma). In fact, Liander our arch-militant appears to be dragging several burly men via his psychic powers. He's somehow rescuing Black Sentinels, those fearsome men-at-arms that are tasked to watch over astropaths and other psykers. The irony that an unsanctioned psyker is doing so is not lost on me.
We finally back it to the gunship (only a single remains), and our voids-man Nathan takes the controls and we high-tail it out of there.
Back on the Argenteus Cornix we regroup. It appears that our task, to find and retrieve something of import that "we'll recognize when we see it" is essentially a failure. While we certainly found something of interest it's safe to say that it is now reduced to ash, and that no one will be using to enslave any more people. That's fine by me.
Category:Tarron Damos
Category:Campaign
Category:Log