Fifteenth Session - The Dark Secrets of the Ferral Wolf

One of the overriding themes of the Warhammer 40k Universe is that of the hidden darkness. The forces of Chaos that are ever-present. And in this session, the crew dealt with that.

The Battle-Psyker's player was long absent due to work and had his character wander off into the ship's swelter decks in an attempt to engage in some drunken debauchery. That was his "in character" excuse for not being present for a number of games. This worked out fine, because his character, while powerful, is not part of the command crew. So, it's not like he would have been missed in day-to-day operations.

Upon Nick's return, his character, while in a drunken stupor wandered into the hidden vault of the Ferral Wolf. Half-because he was inebriated, and half-because he was...beckoned there by something.

What hidden vault?

In the last session, the characters learned that their ship, the Ferral Wolf, was founded by Inquisitor Holocene. And it was created so that it could serve as a prison for a powerful daemonhost - Melchiah. Even now, a living piece of Melchiah is imprisoned aboard the Ferral Wolf. The other four pieces of Melchiah are out there, somewhere, and they are all beckoning to each other. They are destined to be joined again at some point.

The Battle-Pskyer wandered towards the vault but was stopped in time by the crew before something happened. It turned out that he was just investigating it. Even so, this was the first time that any of the player characters had dared to investigate the daemonhost sanctum.

In the heart of the ship, they found a smallish chamber which sported large, arched doors surrounded by strange, glowing lichens and fungi. Standing about the runed-encrusted portal were a number of statues, leaning at odd angles. Each was faded from age, but still bore an archaic smile.

With the presence of the command crew near the vault, the doors to the chamber made an attempt to open. With no one present who knew about the matters of Chaos, the Arch-Militant used his power-armor and power fist to close the vault back in an inelegant fashion - marring some of the hexagrammic wards on the door.

The rest of the session was then dealing with the resulting fallout from this. The crew set up a guard 24/7 at the vault doors, worried about what might happen. And predictably - things began to get strange.

All around the vault doors, were statues set at odd angles. On the view screens the crew set up, the statues seemed to suddenly shift position from time to time, though on site no one could confirm this phenomenon.

As strange and unexplainable events mounted, most of the crew went below to study what was going on. The result was a battle between the crew and the statues. Instead of having them animate, I had the statues disappear and reappear from reality. But so long as they were intact, the Explorers and their retinue were shredded apart by unseen and mighty forces. The Seneschal even died! (Fortunately he was able to burn a Fate Point to survive.)

More on the battle in the next post.