What's that, Skippy? You want another story?
Hear that, Skippy? That's the sound of...my power drill being unpowered. How unfortunate.
Oh well, since I can't get rid of you, I might as well accomodate you with one, and it's even techpriest related. And Violent, too. You like violence, right?
This happened on the very same ship which the whole noble massacre thing happened, then again, I am one of the crew of the Foregone Destruction, so no surprise there. There was actually another massacre, happened two months after we slaughtered half the noble population of the Segmentum, except this time, we weren't the ones that did it. Instead, a techpriest did. Nope, nothing special about him, he was just a member of the Mechanicus detachment that was assigned to me when I volunteered to serve as Explorator.
His serial number was quite damaged when he was identified. Only remaining number was 9, and buggered if I could remember what his name was before he went berserk, so we'll just call him by the only thing we could identify about him, and that's 9. What, you have an issue with that? Go fuck yourself.
The funny thing about some of the more rigid head-up-ass types in the Mechanicum, is that, no matter how much you explain or go into detail about how using some Xenostech is fine as long as humanity comes out on top, they'll still insist you toss every piece of Xenostech overboard and destroy it. Now, I'm no radical, and trust me, I know what's it like to have to deal with a fellow priest who would probably end up fucking every piece of interesting tech they find, but I've always been a proponent of the usage of Xenostech in necessary situations, because when you have to choose between using abominable technology or getting killed by a daemon, I'll pick the one that doesn't cause several thousand years of buggery, thank you.
Our friend, 9, was of the thought that all Xenostech is to be destroyed immediately, so imagine his shock when he was not only placed in the vicinity of Xenostech, but forced to ignore it, and occasionally even interact with it in a way that isn't destroying it. Not very fun, as you might imagine. However, shotgun persuasion and the promises of archaeotech in the future both add up to be very persuasive. Or so we thought. Well, atleast they didn't openly rebel.
First hint that something was wrong was when a routine check-in had three techpriests missing. 9, Theta-54 and K-PP-Q. Of course, in the depths of a massive voidship, losses were expected. Most of us didn't really pay it much heed, the Voidmaster most of all for the main reason that, hey, we Techies aren't exactly the most responsive when we start focusing on our work.
Only person who gave a toss was me and a few of the other Techpriests. One single techpriest going MIA, we can accept, but three at once is too much of a coincidence. Unfortunately, they really didn't give a shit, with the Trader himself telling us to shove a stick in it and choke. Of course, this all came to a halt when the Seneschal went missing.
Okay, the Seneschal going missing. Not exactly a big deal, he's a pitiful drunk, so it's likely he could've stumbled into a corner and cried himself to sleep for the ten thousandth time, but usually he was up awake and reporting in for duty even while soggy and unkempth, but three days passed and there was no sign of him. Not to mention, there usually tends not be a detached hand with the Seneschal's ring just lying around in the lower decks for a deck dreg to find.
Having the Seneschal brutally murdered tends to be a pretty bad thing. Even if he was drunk off his ass, he had enough guns, weapons and sense on him to fight off any attacker, atleast long enough for someone to realize there's fighting going on and investigate or raise the alarm, so whomever killed him was no normal man. Naturally, we turned towards the Deathwatch Killteam that had otherwise been skulking in their rooms refusing to say or do anything because, you know, Xenostech. We never did get much out of them either, but pict records only showed them leaving once, and that was weeks ago on their complimentary tour.
Since the Space Marines weren't guilty of killing anybody, or atleast not the Seneschal, we deducted that we either had a Xenos infiltrator, a daemonic possession or even a Chaos Space Marine. Of course, we didn't suspect any of the crew, much less my Mechanicus detachment, so we did the best we could. Send Servitors with pict-recorders strapped to them to roam the ship whilst we had the deck dregs comb every vent, shaft and hole they could reach, with specific orders not to engage if they found anything, but to return and report.
We had six false leads, most of them stowaways, and one being just a butchered corpse. In Hindsight, we probably should've paid more attention to that, but hey, violent murders tend to happen amongst the lower-ranking crew, and we thought we'd be searching for something big and scary, whereas the injuries on the butchered dude came from what we thought was a cleaver.
Howver, where six false leads were given to us, even more were given by mere fact that many of the search parties were killed, and the Servitors destroyed. Blokes who were monitoring the screens didn't see anything before the feeds got cut. With no leads and most of the searchers dead or destroyed in the case of the servitors, we decided that, if we're going to do this right, we'd do it ourselves.
We kitted up, grabbed our guns, mustered the nastiest motherfuckers and a few fast runners, considering whomever it was seemed to know how to jam comms, and marched on downwards.
Of course, there was the issue that we were trying to search a maze of rooms and shafts in order to find our culprit. However, with the knowledge that none of the search teams managed to get even an incoherent vox out, we decided that splitting up was a fucking dumb idea. So instead we just pulled random crewmembers we encountered on the way and made them help us by serving as advance scouts.
Although we didn't find the killer, we certainly found it's work. Plenty of dead corpses, plenty of butchery. It was a hell of a lot more savage than the cleaved to death guy, so we thought we were on the right track. But, turns out, we were wrong, as we trudge through for several hours before giving up and heading back. Atleast we deduced that it didn't look like Xenos killings. Much, anyway.
Of course, on the trip back, we ran across a man crawling across the floor, bleeding out and missing a leg. With his last words, he gasped out, "Techpriest...Machette...Killer"
It took more than a few moments of exasperated fast-talking before they figured out it wasn't me. No sir, I don't do machette murders. Sides, the corpses were fresh. With that in mind, that narrowed the search down to the 500 Techpriests that came along with me, the three missing dorks included.
Now, you know what our footsteps sound like. With all our metal and augmentations, we're not exactly sneaky, and are the complete opposite of silent. Now, picture a Techpriest that has given up on the whole subtlety thing and is just resorting to making sure he moves, stomping along as he goes. That was literally what we heard moments before we saw the culprit.
Before, 9 was pretty much mostly entirely metal on the outside. A few fleshy bits on the inside, but mostly metal. Usually, it was kept clean and slick, but it seems he's given up on it when he marched into sight absolutely covered in blood, with several bits of flesh and organs stuck between his augs and a cloak that's more blood than red dye.
We opened up on him, of course, but it seems that his madness was so much that it wasn't merely contained within him. Our guns failed to work, bolts unceremoniously flopping to the ground infront of the bolters, Hellguns creating harmless light shows, the machine spirits being affected by the scrambled signals being wildly blasted out by the berserk Techpriest.
Whilst we were trying to unfuck our guns and calm the machine spirits, the Techpriest was there slowly walking towards us, his large machette gleaming in the disco-show coming out of the Voidmaster's Hellgun. So naturally, we ran the fuck away from the machette killer trying to murder us.
It took us about 20 rooms to realize that there were an unusually high amount of locked doors and that most of the unlocked doors lead to the left. Took us a few more to realize that 9 was leading us in a circle and had control over the doors. Seems like the other techpriests were dead or clueless, and the only person who both knew a berserk techpriest is on the loose and is capable of doing anything about his door hacking shenanigans also happens to be part of the "Running away from the berserk techpriest" group.
However, for all his hacking skills, he wasn't exactly apt at tracking, atleast not whilst he was in spree-killer mode. Either way, we couldn't hear his stomping anymore, and that gave us time to regroup and figure out what to do.
We knew that our guns wouldn't be working near him, but we also realized that, judging by the corpses and how the most recent and least butchered ones were slain by a single strike, fighting him in close quarters is a stupid idea. However, we knew one other group on this ship, acclaimed and well known for their battle prowess against Xenos, Heretics and Daemons alike. The Deathwatch Killteam.
After breaking a few doors, hacking through the ones that aren't actively spitting 404's and in one case slagging a door, we got to the Deathwatch quarters. However, it didn't go very well when we poked our heads in saying that there was a "Possessed Techpriest killing everybody.". Naturally, we got a very insulting comment about the xenostech, an accusation about us being in cohorts with chaos and generally the sort of stuff you get when you have ten foot tall killing machines screaming in rage and frothing at the mouth. Well, perhaps not literally frothing at the mouth, but you get what I'm saying.
30 minutes of persuasion did get us somewhere, however. One of the marines, younger than the rest, decided he'd atleast check out what this talk of possessed Techpriest was. He pulled out his plasma gun and trodded behind us, his power armor causing quite the clatter. However, 9's stomping was louder, and we heard him long before we saw him.
Now, we had neglected to mention how 9's insanity spreads to nearby machine spirits, hoping against hope that maybe after blundering off he'd have calmed down a bit. Perhaps the sight of the marine could've cowed him. No such luck, though, and unlucky too was the Marine, who had about three seconds to figure out why his plasma gun wasn't working before the plasma core ruptured and shot a jet of plasma straight into the Marine's face.
However, Space Marines needed a hell of a lot more to take them down than just a rupturing plasma flask, as he tossed the gun aside and pulled out the massive meter-long sword they keep insisting is a knife, closing in for the kill.
Unfortunately, the Marine proved that our plan to not get near the crazy Techpriest was a good one, because as fast as the Marine was, 9 had predicted the lunge and was already swinging by the time the Marine came into range. Now, I'm not sure how a Machette not wielded by an Ork or a Necron could slice through Power Armour, considering the make and durability of one, but it did. Of course, it did not injure the Space Marine much, but it stumbled him. Enough that 9 was already on him and swinging by the time the Marine recovered.
We weren't exactly too confident about going near the Machette of death, but it's not like we could do anything either, with our guns fucking up. Okay, the bolter did manage to fire off a round once and hit the Techpriest, but he didn't care about a chunk of his chest being blown off. By this time, the Marine was taken down, struggling to fend off the unusually deadly blows from the crazed Techpriest trying to kill him.
With doom in sight and our only hope for fighting the Priest off being fucked up by a machette infront of us, we did the best thing we could. We figured that the Xenostech we'd been carrying around, being devoid of the blessings of the Omnissiah, did not carry a machine spirit. So I grabbed the first xenostech weapon I had, which was an Eldar Grenade, and lobbed it at the skirmish.
Our predictions were right. The grenade went off without a hitch, seperating the marine from his arm and tossing him against a wall. Unfortunately, 9 was protected by the bulk of the Marine, and wasn't blasted by the grenade. However, judging from the lack of movement and the nearby doors finally deciding that they want to stay closed, it seemed that we had atleast knocked him unconscious.
We were too busy wheeling around jammed guns to be able to shoot him from afar, and on the assumption that he most likely wouldn't be staying out for long, we decided to get closer to try and take him apart. Of course, he didn't stay out for long, but by that time I had atleast seperated him from his legs so he couldn't move, and the Voidmaster had grabbed his Machette.
Fortunately, however, whatever the grenade did, it seemed to have fixed 9. Well, more precisely, it damaged him to the point that a few of his higher functions were shut off and he wasn't able to talk or move, just make a bunch of beeping noises.
That was it. Phew. We did a bodycount and totaled up the losses. 4250 died during the whole mess, 3700 of which was directly caused by the Techpriest, or atleast somebody with a machette. The rest were either due to malfunctioning equipment, insane doors and suicide. We presumed the suicides were out of fear that the Techpriest was possessed, which he wasn't. Just snapped due to all the Xenostech.
Of course, for the sake of damage control, we didn't mention that to the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who was expecting his Killteam, but instead found himself having to deal with a two-way hostage situation involving the Rogue Trader on one side taken by the Marines, and the fucked-up but still alive remnants of the brutalized Space Marine on the other. We weren't really able to deal with 9 during that time since we were locked in a standoff with Astartes, so he just sat in the corner and kept beeping until the Inquisitor arrived. Took a fair bit of fast-talking, but eventually we all left happy. Or, well, satisfied. Okay, maybe not satisfied, but atleast nobody else had to be killed, though we made a note to stay the hell away from the Deathwatch in the future.
When the Inquisitor heard about the activities of Nine, he asked us to turn him over. Seeing as how we have no intent to keep him around, and we're trying to minimize the amount of hate we'd get from the Inquisition, we did. No idea where he is now, but as soon as they left and the Inquisitor gave us the all-clear, we scarpered.
So there you have it, Skippy. You got your story. Now get out of here before I pour this canister of sacred unguance down your throat just to see if it fixes that squeaky voice of yours.
Well, that's it, fellas. Second writefag, same campaign as the previous one. Hopefully I haven't done anything wrong, but if you see any issues, feel free to point it out.
>>43889009
Goddamnit I meant storytime.
Also bump.
