The St. Valentine’s World Massacre

Howdy folks - my mate Ben and I are planning a WH40K 2nd Edition narrative style campaign. It's focussed on Imperials vs Eldar in the first instance, although we have built in scope to widen the field of combatants so nothing is out of scope.

The basic plan is to have a few meet ups over the year to get some games in, and hopefully follow up with some decent battle reports, but we are also going to invite other members of the Middlehammer community to join in the fun and fight their own battles as part of the campaign and Ben even has a 'Cunning Plan'™ to calculate results no matter what system people use so the only thing to worry about is getting some minis on the table, rolling some dice, and coming up with a kick ass story to feed into the campaign!

Here's the background from the Imperial point of view to whet your appetite:

The St. Valentine’s World Massacre

St Valentine’s World, an M Class Imperial Shrine world, is home to the reliquary of St. Valentine the Ever Ready, leader of the ecclesiarchal crusade which recaptured the sub sector from the vile xenos greenskins more than a millennia ago. Some 30+ years before the present day the Orks returned, invading in a great Waaarrrggghhhh that almost swallowed the system whole. Various forces across the sub sector were redirected to the relief effort and St Valentine’s world was held against the odds. A crusader force of space marines from a number of chapters now garrisons the shrine world along with a patchwork of PDF and Imperial Auxillia forces, slowly pushing back against the Ork menace, but never quite purging them fully from the planet. The ongoing turmoil has allowed various heretical and xenos cults to flourish, and rebellious factions to foment…

The Inquisition’s eye was beginning to turn towards St. Valentine’s World even before the sign of even greater calamity to come. The entire astropathic choir of St. Valentine’s World simultaneously broadcast at full power, likely burning out and killing every single one of them, a message of impending doom for the planet and indeed the whole system. That it was spoken by human voices but in the ancient and eldritch tongue of the alien Eldar, made the event even more alarming. Ordo Xenos archeolinguistic technicians poured over possible translations for many hours before presenting the following transcription to their Ordo masters:

 

“As the echoes of the scream of it’s birth carry across on the tides of the great sea of souls so the Gate of Krynn shall shake. Where once there were three but now are two, there shall be three again, the keys will align and the Gate of Krynn shall open.” 

The enigmatic meaning of the message, and whether such obvious xenos heresy should just be purged from the record and ignored, was still being debated years later when dawn broke over the primary shrine fortress of St Valentine’s World and the pale red light of the local star illuminated a third moon hanging in the sky when previously there were two, fixed in their orbits so that one was always bathing in the light of the star, the other lying forever in darkness in the planet’s shadow. This new moon, a dusky rose red in the early morning light was immediately seen as a harbinger of doom by the local population. They were not wrong… 

The third, alien moon began to have a catastrophic effect on the other two moons and the planet below. Shifted from the previously stable positions the moons accelerated into increasingly erratic orbits and satellites, defence platforms and docking stations were smashed to pieces or thrown adrift into the void. Worse still was happening on, and to, the planet below. Tides changed, the ground shook and buildings crumbled as tectonic plates shifted apart and crunched together under the unexpected gravitational pressures. St Valentine’s World was tearing itself apart!

The planet in turmoil, the remaining Orks rising up in new offensives, Imperial command falters and fragments. It was almost inevitable that the various sects and cults would choose this moment to rise up and add to the growing chaos. Most mysteriously of all, reports of the Eldar started filtering back from outposts and patrols of sightings of great caravans of Eldar and their strange, too tall walkers and floating vehicles traversing the rad-wastes and passing through destroyed and deserted settlements at what seemed like funerary pace, only pausing in their journey to defend against any human or Ork obstruction. 

Enter the Inquisition then, to this strange theatre of war, bringing with them their agents and allies of choice to deal with such a pronounced moral threat. Their retribution for such a monstrous act by the hated xenos Eldar as the destruction of Imperial shrine world would be terrible to behold. 

The stage was set for the St Valentine's World Massacre!

Rogue Quest Level 4: Xenos Psionic/Thief

Well hello.. won't you come on in, take a load off, and meet A'Rhea LI, Xenos Psionic Thief and the fourth instalment of my take on the Rogue Quest project.

You can find out more about the concept behind Rogue Quest by checking out my first three party members here, here, and here, but as always I implore you to check out these guys and the three Rogue Quest projects that inspired me to give it a go myself:

LeadPlague
Magpie and Old Lead
Leadballoony

So, A'Rhea LI, whats her story?

In terms of her role within the party, I've found myself tending towards the same preference I have in online RPGs and am choosing Characters/Classes all of whom have some 'spell casting' type ability in D&D terms, even if this only kicks in at later level in some cases. As a DM and a player I'm a big fan of the potential that a combination of Rogue and Spell Caster presents. The classic example of this is the Illusionist/Thief in D&D and I see A'Rhea LI in that vein. The other great thing about Rogues is all the skill points, so A'Rhea LI has some decent tech savvy to boot. The small 'communicator device' on her wrist boasts some custom electromagnetronics to help her gain entry where others would keep her out.

The hand in the pouch is really evocative of the Thief class, reminding me of the old AD&D 2 rule that Rogues had to try and keep one hand free as much as possible, preventing them from using most two handed weapons, but allowing them to pilfer items at random!

The paint job is not my finest, and these photos don't show up the contrast between the light blue-grey (which ties her shoulder and knee pads in with the webbing worn by some of the other party members) and/or the dark blue of her jacket and the green of her skin, so she looks a bit drab here. I'm annoyed with myself for taking the skin shade too dark. I should have thinned down the last wash of green ink and I've lost a lot of the classic 'Grey' Xenos look she had earlier in the process. It was a learning experience however.

Limitations aside, she does tie in really well with the rest of the group whilst still having her own identity by making much bolder use of the red spot colour. I deliberately voided any purple this time, as I don't want that to become too much of a theme colour for the Xenos elements within the unit. Her equipment was painted up in standard issue cammo green and brown leather to suggest that it has been picked up in a PDF Surplus store somewhere.

I like the relatively low-tech but still obviously Sci-Fi elements, that ties it in nicely to the RT universe in my eyes

The mini is from CP models Sci-Fi 'Hired Guns' range. They are supplied with alternate Human and Xenos heads (which reminds me, I must find where I put the human female head I didn't use... that sounds really bad when you read it back to yourself). I loved the classic look of the Xenos head, but wanted to bring her more into the Rogue Trader universe, so upgraded her pistol to an over sized Laspistol from an early GW weapons sprue.

The original pistol was carefully removed and has already found it's way on to another model that needed a bit of TLC.

The hand in the pouch is a brilliant touch and what absolutely sold me on this sculpt. For me it is an important tie in to the classic D&D/Warhammer Quest Thief class she is portraying, but would serve to emphasise her more 'special ops' role in any force.

I also really appreciate the femininity of the sculpt which has been achieved without losing a sense of functionality about the equipment. I played this up by giving her a little red dress in the Unit spot colour. With the role that I see her playing as both an infiltrator and a spy, the bright red might at first seem incongruous, but I want her to be a bit of a femme fatale, with a hint of Gangster's moll about her past, so she gets to keep her red cocktail dress and uses her psionic abilities to make up for any loss of camouflage.

"Don't mind me boys, just passing through on my way to steal all your stuffs!"

"My name is A'Rhea LI... please... I..." the words appeared in his mind as his harsh demand had appeared in hers.

"WHY DO YOU STEAL FROM US!?" The words came like a psychic assault, battering through her well practised defences, painfully extracting the truth forcing her mind voice to say the words.

"I... I need to raise funds to get off world. Fast. Last job went bad. They're on to me..." She fought to keep from blacking out under the strain.

"How did you get through the perimeter without triggering the lasers? The words were not as painful this time, though the voice still held a tone of command that A'Rhea could not resist.

"My bracelet, some security counter measures of my own design, and a simple planting of a noise in the Eldar's brain, exploiting the fact he had sensed something amiss to send him off in the wrong direction..." Her mind voice was cut off. She could feel the other mind probing deeper. Even her breathing seemed like it was being controlled. She'd never felt psychic power like this before and didn't care to again.

"Impressive. Most impressive. You say you need to get off world. What if I gave you that opportunity, and an offer of employment to boot?"

"I... I'd say I was interested, but..."

"Yes?"

"But I have a debt to pay first. A friend who helped me, who will suffer if they are caught by those who follow me. I need to get them out of town first." There was a long silence, followed by a sense of release of pressure in her mind, her lungs, her muscles...

"Very well. If you can rejoin me here in 3 hours time, you shall have you passage off this world and gainful employment that will suit your specialist talents. Although, you should bear in mind that we will of course be improving security with immediate effect. It appears we've had an unfortunate breach you see..."

2.68 standard Terran hours later A'Rhea LI stood at a porthole watching the rapidly disappearing speck that was Nate's Point as the Unit made it's way off planet and on to the next job.

A'Rhea LI's Mag-lock decoder bracelet does the business for a second time

Sven is left scratching his beard after the laser fence posts are disabled again, even after he remodulated the control algorithms from the default factory setting!

Bonus Laser Fence Posts!!!

I'm really chuffed with the laser fence posts/sc-fi objective markers. I wonder if anyone recognises what they are? The release of the latest film in a certain franchise might give you a clue.

That's right! They are made out of the front end of Corellian Corvette Blockade Runners out of StarWars Kinder Surprise eggs stolen from recovered after being discarded by my children. I've rescued a few potentially useful bits from the ships that came with these weird over sized plastic heads sticking out of the top of them. Luckily both C3-PO and Princess Leia giant heads came with Corvettes, so I have plenty of them, but it was actually the engine pieces that originally caught my attention - they look like multi-launchers for vehicles, or maybe sentry guns? More on them another time possibly.

The Kinder-Corvettes have annoying wholes where the giant heads connect the two halves, so they got a slap of milliput to fill them in, which then also got flocked to make it seem like the posts are a bit more embedded in the ground.

Anyway, they got such a simple treatment with the paints that it's not worth repeating in detail, because there is no detail, but they do the job admirably I think. It's precisely because of how simple they were to make that I like them.

The MDF bases are actually 27mm off cuts from Dave the Scenery Savant, no good for basing models (or objectives for that matter) for gaming purists, but handy enough for this.

I kept thinking about the sonic towers from Lost whilst I was making them. I wonder if Sven the Squat Tech-Bard might be able to hook these babies up with sonic emitters and program them with the Brown Note?

I also like them because I definitely wouldn't have got round to making them so quickly after having the idea if I hadn't been doing the Rogue Quest project, so it's another case of being spurred to more productivity by Oldhammer projects and blogging.

The next level of Rogue Quest has also spurred a spin off project! A villain no less, not the Big Bad, you understand, but definitely a... Bad? But that will all have to wait for the New Year (well sort of) as I'm going to be working on finishing off my entry for Deadcember 2016: The Quick and the Dead between now and the end of the year. That and the drinking. Let's not forget the drinking.

Stay tuned folks :)

Rogue Quest Level 3 - Eldar Ranger

Say hello to Kelechi Iheanacho*1 - Eldar Ranger, and the third installment of my Rogue Quest Project, seen here with an unknown Xenomorph known colloquially as a 'Spine Critter.'

Kelechi comes face to face with the Spine Critter in the rocky wastes outside Nate's Point trading post

*1 Back in the day*2 AVP Shaun had a tradition of only playing Elves in my D&D campaigns, and with one notable and campaign spanning exception, he named these elves after members of the Nigerian national football team. This 'Eldar Ranger' has been named in honour of that tradition.

*2 It was a Thursday.

Rogue Quest is a project to produce a band of 6 Adventurers that match the classic D&D/Warhammer Quest character classes, but for the Rogue Trader universe!

Check out my first two party members here and here, but far more importantly check out these guys and the three Rogue Quest projects that inspired me to undertake this project!

LeadPlague
Magpie and Old Lead
Leadballoony

When playing PC games in the Baldurs Gate, Ice Wind Dale or Ruins of Myth Drannor series I almost always tend towards choosing a Ranger for my main hero, often Half Elven (I know, I know, cliched or what?), and when thinking about the Rogue Quest party I settled on an Eldar Ranger pretty easily. I definitely don't see him as the romatic wilderness hero on this occassion however. My own D&D campaigns have featured a number of memorable Elven Rangers over the years, nearly always played by AVP Shaun, and therefore nearly always had some dark and twisted element to their character. I see Kelechi very much more in this second category. Way more Rogue Trader that way, and every good adventuring party needs some internal strife I reckon!

As I commented to a fellow Oldhammerer while I was in the process of painting him up, I was surprised to find the sculpt (Scout 05) had been in production since 1991 as I'd always associated it with the 2nd Edition Eldar, but then that was obvioulsy a transition period looking back. The fact that it stayed in production for so long is no surprise. It's not necessarily an absolute Jes Goodwin classic, but for me it is an example of the quality that suffused all his work on the Eldar.

I also like the way his longcoat is swept back and his left hand is hovering near his holster, which gives it a bit of a gun slinger type feel

There are some things about the finished model I'm happy with. I think the colour pallete works well, I'm happy with the 'wraithbone' sniper rifle, and the way the red hair band really pops out as a spot colour and serves to tie him in to the rest of the unit when you see them next to each other.

Wait! What's that? A Spine Critter you say?

However, there are some things I'm not so happy with. Although the colour pallette works, the green and purple mean he looks far too similar to the alien Maw Beasts and Spine Critter. On the one hand this serves to link him more to his alien quarry than his fellow party members, and maybe gives a sense that the green and purple is almost like camoflage for a xeno-hunter. On the other hand, when you see them all next to each other it looks like they are the only two colours I have in my paint rack.

Kelechi has used his ranger skills to find the only remants of giant sea creatures in the otherwise barren landscape around Nate's Point

I'm also not happy with the basing. This model was actually completed a good few months ago now (only this blog post being unfinished has prevented me from posting) and was one of my early forays into anything other than flat painted bases. I'm not saying I'm against overhanging scenic bases, but here it serves little to no aesthetic purpose (i.e. it looks crap! :) ) and is a barrier to playability. I imagine I'll rebase it at some point.

Anyway, what do we know about Kelechi Iheanacho the Eldar Ranger?

Kelechi kept himself very much to himself and rarely said anything other than to confirm orders and offer politenesses without any warmth in them to his fellow party members. He said he was from a nomadic clan of  Exodites whose home planet had slowly turned from a colonised paradise into a deathworld. Dragon riders who would hunt the savage monsters of their world to keep their people safe. Well, that would certainly explain his expertise in tracking and taking xenos prey alright, but something about that explanation never did sit quite sit right with Sven.

The Squat's xeno-linguistic and database had revealed some interesting results when his recordings of the Eldar's speech patterns were analysed, and his suspcions having grown over the few months that Kelechi had been with The Unit, were roused further when his snooping device identified the use of Pirate Argot in Kelechi's secretive exchanges with fellow hunters in the saloon at Nate's Point, on the trail of that damned Spine Critter.

When Sven quietly raised the Eldar's background with the Unit's leader back on board their ship, he received nothing but an arch smile and a raised eyebrow in reply. He decided to keep his concerns to himself, but would definitely be keeping a watchful eye on the so called Exodite Ranger.

Kelechi, for his part, kept silent as he polished his long and fragile looking wraithbone rifle, pretending his keen Eldar ears had not heard the Squat voice his concerns. As the squat walked back out to the hold whistling however, Kelechi's eyes were boring into the back of his skull.

 

The Spine Critter

This model was one that I came across when searching for alien animal companions late last year when I was preparing for the Rogue Quest project. At first I considered it as a possible companion for the Eldar Ranger, but in the end the model didn't fit that role, it's more predatory in aspect, and neither did the idea of an animal companion fit with the evolving character concept for Kelechi as a hunter and stalker rather than a nature warrior. Instead the Spine Critter became the perfect candidate as a target for The Unit.

To be honest, although I'm happy enough with the paint job I'm again not happy with my choice of colour scheme. In seeking to avoid it looking like an old school Genestealer dark blue/purple colour scheme I've ended up with it looking far too similar to the two Maw Beasts I painted up as companions for Doktor Krackpotnik (the Wyrd Beastmaster - Druid). At least I did a slightly better job on the purple highlights this time.

I really need to get a better camera if I'm going to keep doing this

It was only ever meant to be a basic paintjob, so I'm OK with how it turned out, from a not very sharply defined plastic cast, but the slightly shiny plastic did give me some problems and made me appreciate GW plastics a bit more.

The model is apparently from Galaxy Defenders published by Ares Games. I got a little card with the model which had some stats/abilities on it, so I decided this would make a good basis for it's profile in Rogue Trader.

M:6 Ws:5 Bs:3 S:4 T:4 I:6 A:3 W:3 Ld7 Int:5 Cl:7 Wp:7

1) Feral senses: ignore stealth - I'm interpreting this as an enhanced ability to sense hidden models, and an increased chance to detect models protected by things like chamelioline, holosuits, etc. and possibly and increased susceptability to sound/light/smell(?) effects.

2) Against single oponents the Spine Critter prefers to use it's claws and powerful bite (S4), but when facing more than one opponent it can launch it's spines in a short range area effect attack. I'm interpreting this as being equivalent to a handflamer attack (but without the chance to set things on fire), which the creature can deploy in a 360° arc once per turn in the shooting phase.

3) It's behaviour pattern leads it to prioritise targeting wounded models when charging/engaging in close combat.The Spine Critter must charge/engage wounded models first if they are in range/base to base contact (in order of most wounded first). However, the Spine Critter will not disengage from combat with a healthy oponent to charge a wounded opponent who is not already in base to base contact with it.

Dr Krackpotnik and his Maw Beasts have got the Spine Critter's scent and try to flush it out into the open for Kelechi to take the 'kill shot.'

4) Acid Blood - fairly standard for unknown xenomorphs. When the Spine Critter is killed it explodes with the force of its pressurised acid blood being released. I've interpreted this as a 2" blast marker with the effect of a flamer, instead of catching people on fire the lasting effect is whether the acid continues to burn (same dice roll/damage/save mod as a flamer).

5) It has some 'armour' - looking at the model, and thinking about various armour types and ratings in Rogue Trader, I think a 5+ Armour Save is about right.

The Critter is trying to escape the Druid's rabid Maw Beasts, but the Eldar Ranger has anticipated it's behaviour and steps out from hiding to take a simple ranged shot to the back of the creatures head.

I enjoyed expanding the project out to include some foes for my Rogue Questers and I've now got plans for some other obstacles or NPCs to go alongside future installments!

Rogue Quest Level Four is already painted (has been for ages!) so only needs a blog post to be written up. Expect that sometime around Christmas then ;)

Thanks for reading, and remember, take care of yourself, and each other.