The Battle for Forgeworld Arcades
By Ian
Dramatis Persona
The Salamander Taskforce
Chief Apothecary Coalharr
Lieutenant Erdrok
Lieutenant Jophiel, Phobos Division
Dreadnought Xa’tel
Inquisitor Gunn
The Tau Kau’ui
Shas’O Suun K’sor, Cadre Commander
Shas’ui Kauyaal, Stealth Team
Arcades
Classification: Forgeworld/Xenos World
Population: Pre-invasion, 3 Billion (current data unavailable)
Tithe Grade: None, previously Exactis Prima
Rotation: 1.2 Terran years
Surface Gravity: 95% Terran Standard
Government: Formerly Ryza-sponsored Machine Cult Theocracy, currently Tau-controlled
“Honour the Chapter, always.” Captain Agatone’s words echoed through Chief Apothecary Coalharr’s mind. Like the captain, the apothecary did not trust the Ordos. Some of the younger marines may be cowed by the man’s rank, but the apothecary knew better: inquisitors were not to be trusted.
“You don’t need to trust me,” the inquisitor said, without looking back. “You just need to protect me.”
Coalharr spat on the ground and replaced his helmet, the acid saliva sizzling through the asphalt. “Stay out of my head and I’ll keep yours attached.” The Inquisitor – Gunn, Coalharr reminded himself – said nothing further.
The streets of Crucius City were quiet. Once a sprawling urban centre of five million, it had become a necropolis. The massive forge pyramids were now collapsed, and the walls of the manufactorum fortresses cast down during the xenos invasion. The streets were cracked and scattered with rubble, necessitating the stormravens to land several blocks from their destination and the taskforce proceeding on foot. Wires and gantries crisscrossed the avenues, some broken and fallen at skewed angles. The Salamanders though moved with an unexpected grace quite different from what their heavy armour suggested.
Except for the dreadnought. Ancient Xa’tel simply walked through anything in his way. Coalharr saw Lieutenant Erdrok wince everytime a gantry screeched under the heavy tread of his long dead battle-brother.
“Stay sharp,” Erdrok said. “We’re-” Everyone moved at once, storming forward, bolters rising. Everyone except Gunn, who hadn’t yet heard the whistling. The apothecary grabbed him under the armpit and hauled him off the street. To Gunn’s credit, he didn’t protest.
The mortar shell detonated in the centre of the avenue, kicking up dust and raining sediment. Xa’tel strode through it, like everything else.
***
“Two minutes, Shas’O!” the Air Caste Kor’vre shouted from the cockpit of the Orca. “The Gue’vesa have already engaged.”
Shas’O Suun K’sor nodded, though no one saw him do it. He shuffled forward in his battlesuit, the XV86 hunched in the interior of the cargo bay. “Open the bay doors,” he commed to the cockpit. A moment later the ramp dropped. Far below, he could see the outskirts of the Gue’la city.
The Air Caste Kor’vre shouted something and, though K’sor couldn’t hear her over the gale, he understood.
One minute.
***
Jophiel saw it first, a century of experience keeping his eyes sharper than those of his comrades. Just a cloud, almost a mirage. Then came the whining of energy.
“Get down, its-“
Lastly, the beams of death.
Three of Jophiel’s men were cut down in the first volley as the battlesuit decloaked. A pair of drones streaked above it, rotary cannons streaming tracer rounds that lanced through the lieutenant’s remaining squad. They flew by faster than even Jophiel could follow: one moment the infiltrators were returning fire on the Ghostkeel, the next little puffs of blood blossomed from holes in their armour as they went limp and collapsed.
The deafening whine of the ion raker recharging filled Jophiel’s ears as he drew his knives.
***
The inquisitor was the first to reach the tablet. It was a grave marker, exposed during the invasion, previously under the flooring of a warehouse or hab. Coalharr couldn’t tell which: all that remained were the stone pillars outlining where the building once stood. The writing and symbols on the tablet were almost entirely eroded, but they began to glow as Gunn approached. He drew his blade–a massive force sword almost as tall as him–and planted the tip at the centre of the grave.
“Cover me, Astartes,” he shouted over his shoulder, barely audible over the storm of burst cannon fire. “This will not be quick.”
Erdrok waved his forces forward as Xa’tel put himself between the inquisitor and more xenos stepping forth from the shadows.
***
Shau’si Kauyaal ducked behind a control panel as his fusion gun cooled. The Gue’ron’sha walking coffin was turning to face his squad. “Reactivate stealth fields and roll clear,” he commed, moments before lascannon fire raked their tower. The gantry swayed, but didn’t fall.
But that wasn’t what held the Kauyaal’s attention. Coalescing before the Gue’va was a void in reality, a gap where something should have been. First there was just a shimmer, like a heat haze on a hot T’au day. But it tore open, folding in on itself and rushing back, the world’s colour rushing down a drain.
Through the ever expanding rift, Kauyaal swore he heard laughter.
***
K’sor hit the ground like a meteor, his bodyguard crashing behind him a second later. Already, his ion cannon was whining as he lifted the battlesuit’s arm, taking aim at the nearest green warriors. They were heavily armoured, his display highlighting the heat and flame weaponry they carried.
They wouldn’t get a chance to use them. The XV8s opened fire, cutting down the eradicators in a single volley. K’sor and his men were already airborne as the gravis marines hit the ground. They spun through return fire, jump jets redlining as they leapt into the cover of a nearby ruin. The bones of their Gue’vesa allies crunched under their heavy tread, the human sacrifices already forgotten.
***
At first, Erdrok thought they were bats, escaping some cellar under the ruins. They swooped and flapped on leathery wings, chittering like vermin. But larger and larger they grew, spewing from the rift and clutching knives in their clawed hands.
Daemons, he thought. As he watched, more rifts tore into existence across the boulevard. The wind was picking up, even audible over the whine of ion fire and the staccato blasts of cannon impacts.
The lieutenant didn’t hesitate for a moment. He levelled his volkite pistol at the inquisitor and burned the heretic before him.
***
The Ghostkeel was faster than it looked, its ion raker swinging towards Jophiel like a giant’s club. But he was quicker, rolling away as it crashed into the concrete, cracking the slab in half. He came up spinning, his knives flashing once, twice, four times before dancing away. The bastard was armoured, but he aimed for weak points: armour joints, exposed wires, lenses, whatever was in striking distance.
The next attack was slower, an iron hoof kicking out at him but only clipping his power pack. Still, the force knocked him back. Without missing a beat, the lieutenant dived under the battlesuit, slashing behind the leg joints. One of his knives held fast and he let it go, continuing his momentum as he leapt onto the ghostkeel’s shoulders and jammed his remaining knife between two armour plates. As the battlesuit thrashed like an animal, Jophiel mag locked his gauntlet, unable to release the stuck knife if he wanted to. With his free hand, he primed a grenade.
***
The inquisitor screamed as he writhed atop of the tablet, his cloak aflame and his skin blistering. Erdrok wasn’t listening, wasn’t even looking at Gunn anymore: he had raised his shield and was now blasting at xenos targets above him.
Wrenching his ruined body, the inquisitor tumbled off the tablet and scraped through the rubble. He crawled away from the lieutenant, towards a light before him, a pure white light, the light of the Emperor…
Coalharr fired three times and let the body burn.
***
Somersaulting away from the battlesuit, a move impossibly acrobatic for someone in heavy armour, Jophiel rolled as he landed, drawing his bolt pistol. The Ghostkeel was slow but still deadly, and it was turning to face him, ion raker whining.
One knife, dropped on the concrete, shattered as the Ghostkeel’s hoof crunched directly on it: the pilot didn’t even know he’d done it. Jophiel could see the pilot, stared directly at him through the shattered viewport. The other knife was visible above the cockpit, sticking above it like a miniature banner pole, levering the armour panels apart for…
Jophiel went to one knee as the krak grenade exploded, tearing the suit in half. A second blast – the overcharged ion raker detonating as the containment field blew out – rocked him, but he didn’t fall. The ground was scorched, two jagged halves of the XV95 battlesuit thrown across the rubble in either direction.
His ears were ringing, the sounds of the battlefield washed out as the explosion overloaded even his helmet’s aural dampeners. The last thing he heard was the line of tracer rounds stitching their way towards him.
To him, they sounded like rain.
***
More Mont’i were coming from the second portal. Ignoring the outcry of his bodyguard, K’sor leapt airborne once again, firing as he went. He landed in the street, and turned as the monsters solidified. They were savage things: horned, snake-men of ashen skin riding metallic beasts that belched steam and roared hate. They brandished red broadswords in a challenge.
But not at him. Twin beams of light cut through the nearest rider. The Shas’O’s threat reader lit up: the Gue’ron’sha were advancing on the hellish cavalry, the stomping warmachine leading the way. Levelling his weapons, K’sor opened fire, blasts of fusion and tracer fire rocking the advancing coffin. Turning ponderously, the Astartes battlesuit laboriously charged the Tau commander.
***
The Fire Warriors dropped into the scant shelter of a crater, burst cannon fire from their nearby Devilfish covering their advance. A Mont’i portal had torn open before them.
“Ready!” shouted the Fire Warrior Shas’ui. The squad shouldered their rifles, as did another squad nearby.
The horned daemons didn’t come from the portal: they materialised around it. They didn’t shimmer in the air, or blow in like dust dunes. One moment there was a green portal wreathed in lightning, the next horned devils were stepping into reality, as corporeal and solid as the warehouses around them.
“Fire!” Pulse rounds hammered into the daemons. Some simply shrugged off the rounds, but others fell. They didn’t lay on concrete slabs, but fell through them, disappearing into the earth. A second fusillade was unleashed, and the daemons were already charging, rushing into the Tau lines. The Fire Warriors kept firing at point blank range as the red blades came down among them.
***
Erdrok surveyed the city block, much of it in a worse state than they had found it. His men to the right were being cut down by battlesuit fire and, as he watched, his esteemed brother in the dreadnought was knocked back by a pneumatic punch from the xenos commander.
“Lieutenant?” commed Coalharr. “Order the withdrawal. With the inquisitor dead, our mission is void. We need to pull back.”
His dead brother raised his own fist, washing the battlesuit in promethium at point-blank range, the fuel igniting a second later. The Tau commander, a walking pyre, grappled Xa’tel, too close for him to bring the lascannon to bear.
“Erdrok! I said pull back,” Coalharr shouted, grabbing the lieutenant’s shoulder guard. “There’s nothing left for us here.”
Erdrok slowly nodded. “Nothing left…” he repeated.
***
Kauyaal burned with anger, but he kept it locked away, hot embers starved of fuel. He was a patient tracker, skills honed from his time with the pathfinder unit. But now he was the ultimate hunter.
He decloaked, fusion gun raised, and fired.
***
Coalharr cried out a warning, far too late as Erdrok fell, his shoulder guard spraying away in molten fragments. He fired his absolver pistol, knocking the stealth leader back and blowing his armour open. Advancing on the alien, the Apothecary floored him with a savage kick and planted a heavy boot to his chest. He levelled his reductor, a tool usually reserved for delivering the Emperor’s mercy, and fired.
“Too good for a xenos,” he muttered as he turned back to the fallen lieutenant, hoping he wouldn’t need to use the reductor again.
Erdrok’s helmet was half off and the apothecary cut away a damaged section to remove it. He was still breathing, and stirred.
Dragging the lieutenant to his feet, Coalharr looked around. Xa’tel’s dreadnought had become a cremation, the Tau commander standing over it a smoke-wreathed revenant, ochre armour blackened.
Looking at the smouldering corpse of the inquisitor, Erdrok said, “Though we paid a heavy price, we stopped a great evil. At least we did some good.”
Half carrying the lieutenant, Coalharr trudged towards the landing zone, activating his extraction beacon for the stormraven. “Not all will see it that way.”
Salamanders by Greg
Tau by Jason
Gue’vesa by Chaos Zach
Terrain, inquisitor, daemons and photos by Ian
This is a companion battle report to a Game-mastered game of 9th Edition 40k. You can read about the process of writing and running the scenario here.