Imperial Mega Voidship

Unlike most of the crew you wake up in small cramped quarters of your own. The main living space in your cube is barely 4 meters cube (13 feet) with a combined shower and fresher taking up barely 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of that for any of you who are more than 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall, when you sit down you have to leave the door open to do your business. The water pressure, of course, is almost always barely a trickle and it never actually gets beyond slightly warm and quickly becomes very cold.

The reason you wake is that the line connected comm device in your room is broadcasting a simple repeating message. "Scout and Protection detail report to bridge. This message repeats!" It continues until you hit the recognition button. After that you get ready and go through the communal area where the scent of unwashed creatures of various species sleeping and rutting in close quarters assaults your nose. Once you make your way through that mess you head down the hallway to the elevator and there you press your personal voxx to the floor buttons and are laboriously lifted up to the command deck.

The Command Deck on the Scrap Hogg is possibly the most well cared for place on the small voidship. There is a bit of rust creeping in here and there but, mostly it is well polished and kept shiny. The various officers work at their stations and in the center of it all is the small throne where Captain sits staring greedily at an immense Imperial Voidship.



The ugly, corpulent, balding man stares at you with his beady eyes when you arrive. "Ahh my valuable Scout and Protection detail. Please look at the screen, that right there is real treasure! I can hardly believe the map I bought was real but, here she is, the Ancient Relic, the lost ship known only as The Eye of Ra."

He grins at the image staring at the ship on screen, as he fiddles with some knobs at his chair. The image turns and you see battle damage, shattered steel, and an opening more than big enough to fit the Scrapp Hogg. "We will dock there, set up our hauling nets and begin the process of pulling everything of value off her to sell. You, will clear the landing area and ensure it is safe before scouting the ship and ensuring the crew’s safety. As usual, any archeotech you can carry is yours to keep and any you tag will net you 2 percent of the profit from sales."

The Viewscreen shows the interior of the Eye of Ra and you realize you are not entering through a rent in her armor, this is an actual docking bay. A haphazard shield glitters as your ship passes into the bay area puffs of atmosphere escaping as you enter into a truly immense dock yard within this Mega Voidship. It is big enough to easily hold other smaller ships like Scrap Hogg and there are numerous other berths most empty but a choice few of them already contain vessels in various states of dis-repair.

A corsair class Aeldari ship has had its engines removed and floats randomly around the bay. A Drukhari Torture Class Cruiser sits at a dock; the very front of the ship looks as if acid has eaten it away and some remnants of its crew float listlessly nearby. The remnants of a Space Marine cruiser is smashed into a wall at what must have been nearly full speed. A Chaos Marine Light Cruiser sits with just the front half at another bay with a red Paint Scrawled on the side "Solja Boys!". Another cruiser class Imperial vessel that looks very similar to the Scrap Hogg sits rusting on its own. Finally, Razick recognizes the Tau light research vessel sitting daintily at a dock, the only vessel that looks as if something is actually working.

The Space Hogg grinds against the dock as it slowly settles in, and you head down the elevator and then into the immense bay. The air is thin but breathable and you notice quite a few barricades set up within the docking bay itself. There are hastily cobbled together barricades all over the docking bay and most of the small exits into the mega ship have had steel welded to them. There is only one path left open into the ship a huge dark hallway and right next to it is a dead Imperial Guardsman and a message scrabbled onto the wall. "The eye doesn't see. The eye doesn't know. It sits in the darkness watching without vision. A blank empty socket staring into the dark and screaming."

Aeldari symbols on the wall opposite have been drawn with painstaking care. "Flee this wretched place before it is too late." Added on by other hands, not quite as elegant and certainly drawn in blood is, "Return to Comorrogh."

Tau symbols are written on the wall as well, "There is no Greater Good here."

Orcs have attempted to draw pictures near the opening here as well a huge red circle with an orc face in the center and then crossed out. Beyond that are more scribbles in blood, in marker, in any fluid that was at hand, most of them are raving madness but the others all have the same simple warning for anyone coming that it is best to leave.

You move forward past the bones of the dead, long gone and unknown. Then the floor seems to be covered with a number of fleshy sacks, at first the sacks are motionless but as you move forward you notice that they are moving slowly. If you stop to observe one you note that there is something alive inside it. If you continue too much down the hallway you will surround yourself with these things.

Kaelith, looks at the walls and the ceiling, even there he notes more of the strange things. Breathing?

When Ol’ Toothy shoots a sack the shot strikes true and the sack explodes with a resounding BOOM!!

The echoes of the explosion resound down the hallway and back slowly fading until you hear clicking on the floor. More and then more clicking a veritable tide and then you see them. The creatures coming down the hall are a foul mashup of species. Orc heads on human bodies, Aeldari and human mixed together, legs where arms should be and heads where hands should be and eyes in all the wrong places. As if some child had simply grabbed pieces of each species and shoved it together with another.

The wave rushing towards you is hundreds, some touch the pods and explosions blow them apart only for more to fill the gaps. A rushing tide of creatures that have no fear and the only sounds are the explosions and the clicking of their feet, all of the feet are some sort of metallic hoof…

OOC: waiting for clarifications above

Toothy runs forward his axe cleaving through the monstrosity in front of him. Yellow ichor sprays from the wound giving the hallway a smell like rotten eggs. The creature scrabbles and scratches at the orc but it’s meager claws are not nearly enough to harm an Orc Boy.

---

Pods fall from the walls in the middle and back row of the oncoming assault. More yellow ichor sprays out and the stench becomes even worse. The splattered droplets on the ground begin to sublimate into an odorous toxic gas.

Anyone near the creatures must make a toughness check difficulty 1 or take a wound from the gas.

2 of the creatures scratch at the Ork but neither seems to do much damage.

---

Rho drops two more of the creatures and others begin to swarm around Toothy. Scrabbling at the Orc Boy furiously..

---

The hallway echoes with the last shots from Silaster’s weapon. The creatures that filled the hallway have been splattered across the walls and floors. After a few minutes the hazardous gas from their deaths slowly fades and you are able to walk through the remains.

You are sure that there were more coming down the hall, but now, in the quiet they are gone. Bigby takes a moment to examine the leftovers. The parts of the creatures were once the race they had been, but there is something inside them beyond that. His first thought is some sort of disease or cancer, mutated cells or microbes that were holding the flesh together.

If you wait nothing further comes, but you almost feel eyes watching you from behind various small holes in the walls. You also see some simple vents where some of the creatures came out previous welds having been broken through sheer force.

Down the hallway it splits into three with simple imperial signs.
*Lift - Bridge, Computer Core, Engineering, Cannons, Storage, Flight Deck
*Barracks and Mess Hall
*Garbage Crusher

The Lift opens, inside is a servitor skull at the controls and room enough for 4 of you if you squeeze tight or 3 if you prefer comfort.

The Servitor acknowledges Rho and replies, "Left Rear Hover motivator useless, Right Front Hover motivator at 20 percent capacity. Left Front and Right Rear Hover motivators within acceptable tolerances. Lift main cable at 45% efficiency maximum load now 500 Kilograms. Elevator command structure damaged unit has re-routed command structure 536 times. Lift brakes non-functional. Last Lift maintenance 7,536 cycles ago. Recommending stairs... error...stairs are currently open to hard vacuum. Unit recommends servicing lift before use."

After that there is a crackle of static as Rho feels something delve into the Skull's program and everyone hears the Skull as it speaks. "₩ɆⱠ₵Ø₥Ɇ ₴ł₴₮ɆⱤ, ₮ⱧɆ ₵Ø₥₱Ʉ₮ɆⱤ ⱤØØ₥ ł₴ ₦Ø₩ Ø₱Ɇ₦ ₮Ø ɎØɄ. JØł₦ Ʉ₴, JØł₦ Ʉ₴, JØł₦ Ʉ₴."

Note: Corsair Armor (and others of you who have armor) can survive in a vacuum for a short time. You only have a few minutes of oxygen though because the captain is stingy like that...

Those of you taking the Lift please go here.


Bigby sneaks away to the trash as the doors slam closed behind the people who have taken the lift. A few moments later you can hear an alarm and then the power to the lift goes down. A friendly voice says, "The Lift is powered down. Please reroute power if you wish to use the lift."

Bigby turns a corner and stares at a crisscrossing maze of belts. A few of them are even still moving slowly towards the crusher while others that seem to be headed towards 'recycling' seem to be permanently frozen. Deep within the mass of trash that is piling up on top of the crusher something big moves. The trash above clatters and repositions itself and Bigby is pretty sure he saw a gigantic tentacle.

There are no signs in the area of how to go about re-routing power. Likely you will need to find the stairs and then go to the right part of the ship that handles the power to the elevator.

In order to find the stairs, it looks like you'll have to pry some doors open that have been welded or barricaded shut.

Map

Just on the left is the elevator, around to the north is the trash area. Down south (not on this map) is the hallway

You begin looking around for stairs as the elevator cogitator suggests but, looking around the area you don’t find anything that looks like stairs.

Some doors are easier to open than others but nothing is very helpful in getting around.

You continue to walk through the areas of the ship near the elevator and hear remnants of movement.

You are near an exit that was once a medbay and is now simply a huge slab of metal slammed down from the ceiling to prevent loss of air pressure. There you find a very old and small ‘temporary’ air lock. Likely some other explorers set it up to attempt to go into the stairs. You think you can use it for the same purpose.

Quickfinger keeps an ear out, he can hear something under the floor moving around, there are numerous holes and vents where creatures could come out at any moment, and he practically feels eyes on his back. Some ancient atavistic sense that a cat is just waiting to pounce perhaps?

As toothy begins to test things out tiny mechanical bugs begin crawling out of the vents. It is a mob of mechanical insects that come screaming from nearly every orrifice that you can see, chomping metallic mandibles trying to render you to scrap parts.

Kaeilith has briefly staunched the horde of scarabs but, the tiny insects seem to be nearly endless as they skitter out from various tiny places. They only pause at the end of the hallway and do not proceed too far down the hallway before stopping. They then wait for a time before slipping away into various nooks and crannies making the area around the lift look almost pristine.

A few of the mechanical insects stay in the hallway and you watch as they begin constructing the very creatures you first fought in the hallways.

You take some potshots and the mechanical insects skitter away. Apparently not interested in loosing too many of their horde to your weapons as long as you aren't in areas they are protecting.