Rogue Trader Campaign Log - Session 9 : Lines of Communication

The immediate threat dealt with Lord Captain Black turned his mind back to the young blind woman; Confessor Cornelius begged leave to go and search the settlement so that he might minister to the injured and lead the faithful in a prayer of thanks to the God-Emperor for their deliverance, deep in thought about Dana, Captain Black nodded and watched the priest leave. Calling for Thomas Vitanteur, he asked the criminal what he knew about the young blind woman, shrugging the criminal said that he knew very little apart from the fact that she lived in an isolated homestead in the nearby ash wastes and occasionally came to town in order to trade for supplies.

Enginseer Prime Pak had recovered consciousness, his self-repair subroutines working overtime to get him ready for action, still curious about that blanking of communications when the shambling horde had attacked Pak asked Vitanteur if there was any way that he could boost a vox signal; nodding Vitanteur assigned the techpriest one of his men, a local boy called Kreg who knew of an old defunct Locutus-MkII comms tower that had been abandoned in the ash wastes when the technology had fallen into disrepair. With a mind to repair and utilise the equipment in the vox tower, Pak jury-rigged a derelict jeep from the settlement and, with a small contingent of soldiers and his guide sped off into the ash wastes.

Lord Captain Black and York Benetec had been discussing the strange feeling that had stole over both of them when they had fallen under attack from the carrion walkers, Benetec theorised that the creatures may have been somehow temporarily strengthening the barrier between the material world and the warp whilst they had been present and that perhaps the Captain had some vestigial sensitivity to the tides of the immaterium. Talking to the young blind girl Dana they discovered that she leaved with her aunt who had unfortunately become ill and that Dana was selling trained animals from the underhive in order to purchase her aunt some medicine, the old woman had come down with ash sickness, a breathing difficulty caused by toxic ash that falls like tainted snow from the ceiling of the hive miles above. Captain Black and Benetec visited the young girls homestead and witnessed that she seemed to have an almost supernatural ability to calm even the wildest underhive predator, a talent that appeared to be from her mother who died in a mutant raid just after Dana had been born; Benetec theorised that she had some minor mutant ability rather than any measurably psychic ability.

Having reached the comms tower, Pak's easily overrode the door controls and gained access the vox building, drawing on his knowledge of such buildings they quickly located the main control room of the tower but were dismayed to discover a number of silver beetle creatures apparently fused into the wiring of the system; mindful of the damage that these metal scarabs had inflicted last time the group had encountered them Pak came at the problem sideways, unfastening one of the consoles that one of the creatures was attached to and attempting to remove the entire unit. As power to it ceased the creature launched itself at one of the soldiers, sinking twin metallic pincers into the man's neck; with consummate skill the techpriest sliced the creature in two with his power sword, rendering the victim unconscious. Examining the system, Pak was able to determine the metal insects were plugging into the backup power system running through the vox tower and that they were causing it to broadcast static on all channels, effectively blanking out communications in a wide area nearby (including the settlement of Redtooth); with the comms now freed up Pak received a signal from Arbite station 1 who were under by a force of renegades at the wall between the underhive and the hive city.

Re-joining with Captain Black, the group cobbled together a ramshackle trio of wheeled vehicles and raced towards the the wall where they saw the horde of mutants that had rampaged through the settlement ahead of the carrion walkers launching frenzied attacks on the arbite defenders of the walls. Calling on reinforcements from the Lunatic Pandora in orbit, Lord Captain Black was gratified when a shuttle of his soldiers joined the arbites on the wall (with the grateful permission of their leader, Proctor Erebus) and helped to repel the attack.

With the thanks of the Arbites Proctor, once the mutants had been dealt with the group retired to the mansion-like facilities that had been placed on permanent loan to them for the duration of their stay by the ruling Decusis family; Pak produced the boxed remnants of the destroyed scarab, it seemed that the xenos behind the attack had been attempting to implant their technology in people and acquire more subjects, the techpriest wondered whether or not the xenos could access the memories of those that they had implanted their tech in.