Recon into the Necropolis

## Table and Terrain

Played at Mox, with a battlefield representing the most promising area of the archeotech excavations deep inside the Necropolis.

Deploy Hammer-and-Anvil style, long-wise across a full-sized table, with 24" deep deployment zones.

The most mechanicus/necropolis terrain available at Mox, arranged into a slightly tight layout, with an area on one board edge along the center line being the archeotech dig site, and another area on the other side of the center line representing the area where the excavated STC artifact has been moved for examination and study.

## Forces

1k of FW Nimh with moiraxes and dune crawler, representing the archeotech excavators, with 4-chosen-perk inquisitor

1k JungleKing and Scydriel's tank and mechanized infantry force (With 4-chosen-perk Scydriel, one relic and one warlord trait)

## Objectives

A central objective in a large ancient admech gallery, at the dig face where the STC archeotech is being found

And an Artifact! It doesn't need to be quite as pimp as the mcguffin artifact from the previous campaign (the staff that containg the exalted keeper of secrets), but the artifact is a true and undeniable STC construct, the having of which alone will greatly boost the fortunes of the AdMech ForgeWorld and character who brings it to the attention of the wider Imperium, or perhaps uses it to gain personal/FW advantage over their rivals in subsector Bardo?

## Victory Conditions and Narrative Outcomes

Major Victory if either side holds both the STC Relic and the central objective at the end of round 5.

If neither side holds BOTH the relic and the central objective, then whichever side holds the STC Relic wins a minor victory.

Whoever holds the Relic at the end has The Verified STC Artifact

And whoever holds the central objective gets narrative advantage over the Necropolis-Rat Maze planet

## Corporal Jenkins earns a medal

Corporal Jenkins (see "Private Jenkins keeps track of Who is in Charge" from the Pandemic era narrative) was still terrified, even though the battle seemed to be over. Still clutching his warm meltagun to his chest, Jenkins looked down to where the Jungle King lay unconscious on the floor of the bouncing chimera. The King's flesh was charred and still smoking, and his cybernetics had apparently been overloaded and disabled by the numerous lightning bolts that had struck him in rapid succession. After Jenkins and Father Barbatios had dragged the King's unconscious body onto the rear loading door of the chimera, Queen Scydriel had injected him with something and reported over the wireless that the King lived, but then the Queen had fixed a grim expression on her face, and Jenkins had never seen her look so worried before.

Apparently they were victorious? Tank Commander Fabios had reported over the wireless that he had destroyed the second armiger, that the remaining enemy tank had withdrawn under his fire, and that he was holding the archeotech dig site, awaiting reinforcements. Scydriel had answered that chimera 2 had the STC artifact and the wounded King on board, and was returning to the surface and their dropship for immediate evac.

Jenkins had seen pyrrhic victories many times before, during the long war in the Primus Hive on Astheneia, on another world now far across the stars...but even if this looked like some victories he had seen before, it certainly didn't smell like victory: All he could smell was the burned flesh of the Jungle King.

...earlier...

The techno-liches of FW Sheol had moved one of their cruisers, their lead assault transport, and some support ships into orbit around the Necropolis world. They hoped to make their new home here, in the dark and haunted halls of this ancient extinct forgeworld. When the liches of the Necroclade demanded the Jungle King send a recon force to find the rumored source of the archeotech artifacts, the Jungle King had decided to lead the expedition himself, and Scydriel had insisted on coming to keep him out of trouble. He was accompanied by 'A' company of the King's Own Chimeras, and four of the best Russ tank crews in his army.

A dropship from the assault transport had brought them down to the surface, which looked like a horrible, dark, and windy place. A crumbled hive city towered over their landing zone, and Jenkins thought the liches of FW Sheol were welcome to keep this place for themselves: it was certainly not anywhere he wanted to live, and didn't seem like a fit place for human inhabitants. But Corporal Jenkins did what the Jungle King ordered, and the Jungle King did what the Mordri-3 techno-liches commanded, so down into the catacombs they went.

The dark descent lasted many hours. The dim red lights inside the chimera sometimes flashed, and the mechanized column paused often to carefully scout out a dangerous intersection, or to search for information in the ruins. When the column stopped, the infantry would get out and form a defensive perimeter, usually while Scydriel and the accompanying tech priests searched a promising area. Corporal Jenkins' primary job was to guard Father Barbatios, and they always stayed close to their chimera. The forgeworld had been extinguished many thousands of year ago by biological exterminatus, so most of the ancient bones had long ago turned to dust, but he heard reports over the chimera's wireless that the scouts had found signs of recent inhabitants, fresh tracks, and strangely, what Scydriel described as "fur, possibly from a dog".

Corporal Jenkins was nervous every time he stepped out of the safe chimera into the deep, still darkness...but his feeling that the Emperor was watching and protecting him personally kept him from really worrying. He was sure this time wouldn't be any different than any of the previous times he and Father Barbatios had deployed into danger. While they nervously waited, Corporal Jenikins stared a small pile of dusty cybernetics on the floor by the stone wall opposite the chimera's open assault ramp, and he was fixated by the eerie sensation that the robotic ocular implant atop the pile was staring back at him. The flesh and bones of the mechanicus tech priests who had dug and inhabited these tunnels aeons earlier may have decayed, but their machine parts still told where each of them had fallen, as they succumbed to the explosive viral plague that exterminated all life on this world. He wondered how the eye's owner would feel about their searching and disturbing the peace of the necropolis, and didn't like anywhere that line of thought took him... The area was declared clear, and they all piled back into the red-lit interior of their chimeras. The doors closed, and it resumed it's noisy shaking trek, deeper into the catacombs.

Suddenly the darkness outside his porthole was split by bright flashes of lightning, then a spectacularly luminous bright blue flash that lit up even the inside of chimera, and a second later by the sound of the tank at the head of their column exploding! Nervous voices on the wireless called out casualties, and panicked voices demanded to know where the shooting was coming from. Jenkins didn't like that one bit: it was rare for the Jungle King to fall into an ambush, particularly when he was accompanied by Queen Scydriel. The Chimera stopped, opened it's top hatch, and Queen Scydriel climbed up and out into the darkness, alone. Strangely, that made him feel better, even though she was no longer aboard to protect them, because it meant that now she was out hunting the enemy, and to hear the Jungle fighters talk about her, nothing in the galaxy could stand against Queen Scydriel: She had killed a Hive Tyrant by herself, and several times had personally defeated carnifexii and cultist patriarchs.

But the bad news just kept coming over the wireless: now Chimera 1 was down, and the Jungle King and his men were out in the open, attempting a charge! Looking out his porthole in the side of their chimera, Jenkins could see the flashes of enemy guns firing down on them from the ruins ahead. He heard Tank commander Fabios report over the wireless, "Fire ineffective, maneuvering to charge, request immediate support".

Rapid flashes of bright lightning passing over his chimera were visible through the porthole...and then to his horror he heard,

"The King is down! Rally to the King and secure the area for extraction!"

Father Barbatios put his hand on Jenkins shoulder and said, "Be brave, my son. The Emperor may ask much, but the most He can ask is our lives, which we are already prepared to give in His service."

Then chimera 2 skidded to a halt, and the assault ramp opened. Corporal Jenkins and Father Barbatios rushed out the back of Chimera 2 along with second platoon, and charged towards where the Jungle King had fallen. The King's body and the last standing survivors of first platoon were surrounded by the bodies of fallen jungle fighters, in front of a strongpoint that appeared to be covered in giant rats wielding guns and technomagic devices. Suddenly everything was brightly illuminated as the heavy flamers of their chimera sprayed over the strongpoint, filling the air with the smell of burning fur.

A gigantic rat with many devices and mechanical arms sticking off his bloated furry body appeared to float above all the rest, seemingly unaffected by the flames. Father Barbatios was singing a battle hymn in his clear baritone, waving his chainsword above his head, and leading the charge towards the terrifying rats. Second platoon fired a ragged volley from their lasguns into the vanguard rats on the strongpoint as they charged forward. Corporal Jenkins cradled his meltagun, and jogged after the mad priest, looking up just in time to see Queen Scydriel suddenly jump onto the strongpoint from it's rear and decapitate the giant floating many-armed rat!

Corporal Jenkins fired his meltagun up at the fearsome rats, only the third time he had fired it in fear or anger, and just like the other two times, he hit nothing with his blast of withering heat. But then they were among the enemy, and the rats were even more terrifying up close: electricity crackled from their clawed hands, and they hissed so loudly that the courage of some of the men around him gave out and they fled, being immediately slain as they ran into, and were burnt to death by, the electrical arcs from the hands of the hissing Corpuscarii Electro Priests.

Assailed by numerous arcs and slashes, Father Barbatios was covered in blood and burns from his many wounds, as he could not parry all the incoming attacks with his chainsword. Corporal Jenkins felt that the Emperor wanted him to shield Barbatios with his own body, and that this was how they were supposed to die together in the service of the Emperor, just as Father Barbatios had predicted before they charged out of their Chimera. So Jenkins charged forward, raising his meltagun over his head and running past the not-quite-invincible-enough mad priest as Father Barbatios staggered to his knees. Jenkins swung his meltagun and closed his eyes as he ran between the electrical arcs, which surprisingly seemed attracted to his meltagun rather than to his body, and despite his fear and pain, it felt for a split second that everything was right in the world and he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The Love and Wrath of the Emperor flowed out of Jenkins' heart, was focused and magnified by the machine spirit of his meltagun, a machine spirit that had grown to heroism in the hands of now-long-dead Jungle-native Corporal Sharpwood, and together this allowed them to smash one of the rats to the ground! In surprised awe of what he had done, and seemingly miraculously unhurt, Jenkins stood over his slain foe, undeniably visible to all around him as an instrument made Invincible by the Wrath and Protection of the Emperor.

It looked like Jenkins had turned the tide of the melee on his own, to Father Barbatios and the three other infantry survivors of 'A' Company of The Kings Own Chimeras. Suddenly the other rats were gone, and the survivors quickly turned to recovering the body of the fallen Jungle King.

But what had really happened was that Queen Scydriel had run out of the shadows just as the heavy flamers of chimera 2 had distracted the rats on the strongpoint, and she had attacked their position from the rear, systematically slaying the leaders of the fearsome techno rats. After she decaptitated the floating many-armed manipulus, and then won a brief duel with the inquisitor directing the surviving rats, the rats began to flee in disorder. Scydriel called off her pursuit as the last rats fled from the vicinity of the coalface of the STC Archeotech mining site, choosing to go back and secure the site of the fallen King, where Chimera 2 had disembarked Father Barbatios and Corporal Jenkins.

Scydriel felt a rare moment of fear at the idea that the Jungle King, now her husband in addition to the figurehead leading her army of refugees, might actually die here. Conducting an audit of her feelings, as her teachers at the Schola Assassinorum her taught her to do, she was reassured that her fear was primarily at the risk of losing a valuable military asset with outsized importance to the morale of her army...but also surprised that a bit of her fear seemed to be about her personal loss, because she come to rely on the Jungle King as a friend and advisor.

The technomagi of FW Sheol would be pleased, and indebted to the King and Queen, for bringing them so rich a prize as the STC artifact, AND securing for them one of the most desirable possble FW Sites in the larger area around subsector Bardo. The liches would owe them the securing of a desirable-for-humans world, where the Astheneia Survivor Exodus Fleet could settle and grow back the human numbers in the subsector.

Together they will next take their best shot at securing that gorgeous world they had seen in the survey records....farther away and deeper onto the wild side of subsector Bardo, but beautiful in the ancient original Imperium survey data, and reported to have a residual feral eldar presence?

They couldn't really know what was there, because the last Imperium reports from the area were from centuries ago or longer. But so far the fast scouting ships of FW Sheol had mostly found varying levels of ork infestations that had been growing and seemingly pruned back by some unknown parties, possibly by Aeldari? or the T'au colonists that were said to be moving half the subsector over?