>>12325360
They were upon the fleeing evacuees before anyone could have judged possible. You recall taking one out as it hurled itself from the prow of its infernal vessel, before being pinned down by sheer volume of firepower. Then, there was that screaming pain in your shoulder, and the sudden roar of something igniting violently. And after that, only blackness.

Grim tales of the agonies inflicted by the witch-things upon their captives bustle to the surface of your mind, sending a shiver down your spine. There’s literally no end to the things you imagine they could want from you… after all, you’re a strong, healthy… [CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY, t/g! Aside from a Space Marine, you can be any kind of Imperial you want. A guardsman, an SoB, an Acolyte, a mercenary enlisted into the PDF... the possibilities are endless!]

Administratum Scribe

Adeptus Arbites?

Any other suggestions? If not, I'll flip a coin.

…strong, healthy Arbite of the Emperor’s Service.

You look yourself over, and determine that you couldn’t have been out for too long – you’re still wearing your own clothes, albeit stripped of any effects that could conceivably be used for self-defence. There’s pale light slipping in though the miniscule window overhead, however, so you’re not in transit between worlds. Either the foul aliens have made rest on Ephebius, or they’ve been using another planet in the same system as a base of operations.

Over to you, /tg/.

This is an 'inb4' but...

Vindicare Sniper.

And no, love can't bloom on Commoragh, for it is forced upon you.

Damn, nobody at all interested?

>>12325572
A bit.

I suppose a quick glance around the room is in order to see what's even here.

>>12325608
The chamber extends for some length beyond your particular little enclosure. The architecture is bleak and shoddy – nothing you’d ever expect any artsy Eldar to make. In general, it’s damp, cold, and pretty much inhospitable, but the row of cages set into the opposite wall, as well as those either side of you, suggest that this is some kind of macabre storehouse. Something does strike you as particularly odd, though, even in the haze of half-wakefulness. The lighting is slow – the tiny windows dotted between the cells are the only sources of illumination – but you can tell that each cage only has a single occupant. This seems like relative luxury in comparison to the bustling slave-pens you’d been told of.

Aww, I thought this was Gladiator Manager Quest at first.
Now I'm sad.

>>12325692
Go up to the bars and speak in the hidden tongue your enforcer brothers use. (translated to) ["This is Officer John Kimble, I am unharmed, any other Arbites give a status report!"]

>>12325725
>Kimble? seriously?
Second this, then look around if there might be anything we might use as a weapon, femurs and other assorted bones included

>>12325692

Try to look out one of the windows. We need to find out What is outside...

At your utterance, a few shapes stir in the darkness, but most of them just seem to glance at you before shuffling down into their cells. To your relief, however, there is a low reply from further along in the hall – probably at least five enclosures to the left.

[“Kimble…? Emperor’s Grace, man, I thought I saw you engulfed in that last blast! This is Sergeant Keel… unharmed, for the most part. I know Corvin’s in here too, but I think she’s still out.”]

Encouraged by the sound of your superior’s voice, you begin scrabbling across the cage floor for anything that could be turned into a weapon. In the darkness, your hands close around what at first appears to be an old bit of bone, but you soon identify as part of a beak. It would seem that not every occupant of this place has been human.

You check the window, but the angle and depth of the diminutive portal makes it impossible to discern anything about your whereabouts other than that you are planetside, and it is night.

>>12325832
Check your person, have you been stripped down to the cloth and armor of your uniform?
You could have a boot knife hidden away, or you could go so far as stab someone with your badge.
["Sargent, do you know if any of the army elements are around? Why're we even here, what do they have planned for us"]

>>12325832
>Sergeant Keel

Everything is gonna be allllright...

The armour has actually been peeled off your uniform, leaving areas of bare flesh. Your badge, for some reason, isn’t gone – a sign that even in this place, the Law of the Emperor is absolute, perhaps. Your boots are scuffed but intact, and you could most certainly hide that piece of xeno beak in them.

Keel emits a sound that you’ve always presumed to be a sigh, but has more in common with a growl.

[“There’s a few guard boys in here, sure. Probably more PDF. I was one of the few still awake when they went an’ shoved us in this hole, so I got a good look around. There’s a big, domed room right outside. Was empty at the time, but they separated us from the rest of the prisoners to bring is through it, so something’s up.”]

Well I suppose we hide the beak in our boot then.

>>12326017

agreed. Hide the beak on our person. Wait for something to happen.

>>12325887
Ohshi, I speedread this between eating, and read ‘boot knife’ as ‘beak’. Whoops. Well, you don’t have your knife.

-

As you slide the uncomfortable shard of alien matter into the side of your boot, there is a grating, metallic sound from one end of the chamber. A piece of the blackness folds away, and you realize that it was a door opening. The room outside is lit by a pale blue light, and silhouetted against it is a sleek, armoured figure. It strides in, quickly accompanied by two, then four, then six other silhouettes, although these ones don’t seem to be wearing as much armour (they do, however, look as though they have those nasty rifles you saw put to use on Ephebius).

The significantly spikier figure barks something in his debased tongue, and they begin to open the cages closer to the exit. They prod out six prisoners, and two of the aliens herd them outside. The rest begin moving down the hall.

>>12326139

Wait till there's only two left, then stab the bastards with your beak-knife! They don't have much armor, should go down easy!

>>12326284
Judging by the way it’s going, you’re going to be in the next group of six, so there’ll be at least four of them in the room when they take you out.

>>12326359

4 vs six? I like those odds. Plus you have surprise.

Coordinate the attack with Sgt. Keel!

>>12326359
4 of them? not good odds at all

>>12326359
Best play along then, we nearly got kille in that blast and there's going to be a lot more of these blue bastards about.
With luck we'll be grouped up with some of the guardsmen or other arbites.

>>12326359
play along. If need be, go out in a blood bath of glory. Who knows? if you kill one, they might just let you live to fight in the gladiator arena

>>12326399

Play along? That's a horrible idea! Who knows, maybe they are staging live executions! Who knows what sort of terror is in this blue lighted dome. Seriously, tactically it makes much more sense, since you don't have weapons, to take advantage of the small cell rooms and begin the fight here.

Plus, there's only 4 of them, if you leave there may be many many more.

Eventually, after a lengthy silence during which the remaining aliens merely paced up and down the length of the chamber, two of them broke off to begin moving out the next group. You see two men on either side of you pushed out into the beam of light offered by the doorway, both of them wearing the tattered remnants of Ephebius’ PDF uniform, before one of the creatures unlocks the door to you enclosure and motions with his rifle for you to follow your fellow humans’ example.

You note that you were right – these Eldar aren’t wearing any of the smooth, jet-black armour you saw back during the attack. They appear to be rather at ease, clothed in tunic-like garb that probably passed for ‘work clothes’ amongst the dark host.

>>12325360In preparation for the Dark Eldar release…

we're gonna Quest thread guardsmen killing dark eldar gladiators? that's kinda a bummer

>>12326495
and they have weapons? fuck my previous suggestion, walk out, pretend to trip, wait for them to prod you up, and as you get up pull out that beak, shank to fucker in the stomach, pull the rifle and open fucking fire!

>>12326532

brilliant!

>>12326495
These guys are workers, and we're a trained Enforcer trained for close combat and shooting.

Bwa ha ha.

Fiegn to go down to tie you show, sneaking your beak dagger from it's hidey hole. 21 feet my friends, we walk calmly out of out cage, with the elder busy leading other men out. One we're close enough, dart to the side and in with our beak, giving the beast two quick stabs to the stomach and try to wrestle the weapon away to fire on the two eldar moving to the next cages. hopefully the PDF will move on the other eldar while we take care of this one.

oh a shanking we will go!

>>12326563
thank you.

>>12326532and they have weapons? fuck my previous suggestion, walk out, pretend to trip, wait for them to prod you up, and as you get up pull out that beak, shank to fucker in the stomach, pull the rifle and open fucking fire!

I could see this working on some lazy human guards or grots that weren't paying attention

but... against super impossibly past space pirates who are used to guarding all kinds of warrior prisoners from across the galaxy

well, if it works this quest is retarded.

>>12326603
well cant blame us for trying to be the masters of our own fate....sometimes the perfect situation never appears, and by the time you realize that your fucked

You step out without any fuss, and as soon as you’re out you note that the other two men trailing behind you are military material, too – another PDF soldier, and one of the Krieg guardsmen station on Ephebius. You can’t help but think that the guy looks strangely naked without his gas-mask. He doesn’t look afraid, though, and that galls you somewhat.

This wasn’t right. You shouldn’t be playing along with these monsters’ game. You should making them pay for every drop of blood shed on Ephebius…

A nasty little thought budding in your mind, you make a convincing show of half-tripping. The Eldar at your side utters something in his pointed speech, but in the relative darkness, he doesn’t notice that you’ve pulled that sharp little beak from your boot.

But the moment you return to your full height, you realize that the armoured alien on the other end of the room is staring right at you, his eyes a sharp, acidic green, impenetrable and scrutinizing.

>>12326673
If we stabbity stabbity we could use the worker as a body shield to fire on the task master?

>>12326673

use the closest xeno bastard as a shield, slit the throat. These guys can't weigh all that much. once you get a weapon, you and the other two Guardsmen can kill the armored asshole. One or two of you may die, but that's nothing, as long as you can save the rest of the prisioners.

>action dacques
how right you are captcha

>>12326693
Yeah i think were made, do the stabbing and use the fleshy stabee as a shield, we may live through this yet

Our best bet isn't to fight against the eldar directly, it's entirely in their favor and honestly they're just better straight up fighters

We gotta figure out the internal politics of it,
they're always scheming against each other, if we can help one fuck over another we can potentially cause enough chaos to escape.

Stab the one next to us in the neck and then drop the beak and raise our hands, all the while staring pointedly at the task master. If the aliens are as heartless and sadistic as the stories suggest, perhaps we can win a bit of favor.

>>12326758
nah, take too long

>>12326801
i like this too.

What previews do we have of the new DE models?

>>12326851

im assuming you also like to get shot with a splinter rifle

>>12326801
2nd

You don’t like that stare. You don’t like it at all.

So you act quickly. You bring that nasty piece of xeno up for the closest Eldar’s throat, your other arm reaching around to get a grip on the creature’s wrist, hopefully to manoeuvre him into a favourable position.

You catch him by surprise. You KNOW you catch him by surprise – you can see it in the baffled instant just before your improvised weapon meets flesh. Unfortunately, not throatflesh. The creature moves damn fast, and instead of spilling its lifeblood across the floor, you find yourself tearing a long, bloody line across its face. It screams and reels back, but not before lashing out, hitting you squarely in the stomach.

You feel your back hit one of the cages. The breath’s been knocked right out of you, and by the Emperor, it hurts. But the bastard dropped his gun.

Everything’s suddenly a horrid blur. The Eldar are shouting and firing. They pointed their guns at you, first, but by the sounds of it, the two PDF troopers decided to follow your example.

>>12326865
Cant hurt that bad.
Still say that we should do what
>>12326801
suggested

>>12326899

There are two things you need to do right away.
1. Get a rifle, it is your only hope of survival now.
2. Get that damn door shut and locked. You need a few moments to collect yourself and your comrades to prepare a proper escape.

>>12326899
Roll and get the gun, task master first, armor means trouble.

Hopefully more will follow, men near cages with lash out at the passing eldar, who knows.

>>12326899

drop to tha flo' and find that splinter rifle yo

>>12326953
this should suffice, but hope the other soldiers didn't decide to get it in the scramble.

stop drop and roll, get that weapon yo

>>12326997
are my rap battle senses tingling?

>>12326899

Stop, drop, grab the rifle, and rock and roll.

Only one way out of this now.

>>12327017
fo sho

>8 minutes since last post

There'd better be some EPIC combat text coming. I'm talking Abnett level.

>>12326899

Sorry, had to take a call.

-

You work through the pain, dropping into a roll. Your chest creaks, but you ignore it – the only thing that matters right now is the disgusting, but, you’ll admit, pretty damn appreciated xeno weapon lying on the floor in front of you. The moment you feel your hands around its weight, you’re on one knee, swivelling about and taking aim at the armoured Eldar at the end of the room.

A single tug of the trigger fires off a burst of crystalline projectiles, but the creature is already moving, throwing its weight to the side and bringing its arms up to protect its face. You see – and definitely hear – a pair of splinters dig through the monster’s armour and embed themselves somewhere in the soft tissue of its forearms.

As the adrenaline begins to level out, though, you can’t help but notice that both the PDF troopers are lying in pools of their own blood, and their targets look unnerved, but otherwise immaculate. Behind them, through the doorway, you can see the two Eldar that left previously rushing towards the room.

Beside you, though, you can still hear the sounds of brawling. The Krieger, presumably.

funnily enough, I was listening to House of Pain... word to your moms, I come to drop bombs, I got more rhymes than the bible's got psalms.

>>12327147
hold down the trigger and don't let go, corridors for the win

>>12327147

well the krieger wont stop fighting and i think hes gonna prove to be our most useful comrade in the future , so turn around, knock him out with our rifle then drop it and surrender , we've already lost

>>12327147
COVERING FIRE
Keep those DEldar's head down, then cap the guy who's fighting the Krieger

open fire, were all ready dead, might as well go down in a blaze of glory

Take out the one distracted by the Krieger- but be careful to avoid friendly fire or the other ones sneaking up on you.

>>12327147

Bitches ain't gonna be immaculate when they full of splinters. Hold down the trigger and unleash hell! Tear the two DE up and get that damn door shut ASAP. Let the Kreiger fight, you must get his blood lust up.

Suddenly realizing that you might be in the arms of the Emperor very soon, you grit your teeth and tell yourself that you’re at the very least gonna make a bloody good show of it. You squeeze down the trigger to your weapon, filling the hall with razor-pointed barbs. The two Eldar caught near the doorway scrabble to be out of your way, hurling themselves aside. One of them goes limp in mid-air, his chest a hive of crystalline daggers. The pair outside were quicker, and lucky enough to have their comrades between them and the end of your rifle, getting into cover at the edges of the door without injury.

Twisting about to put the Krieger and his opponent in your sights, you… are momentarily dumbstruck by what you see.

The sounds of ‘brawling’, as it turns out, were actually the sounds of ‘guy pounding on some Eldar face till it looks like mushy pink soup’. You’re not even sure his victim is still alive, let alone conscious.

>>12327298

HEY HANS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK YOUR NAME IS , GRAB THAT GUN AND GET INTO COVER!!!
proceed to find our own cover

>>12327298
"HEY FUCKFACE- STOP WAILING ON THAT GUY AND GET YOUR ASS TO COVER"
Proceede to lay down judicious covering fire, and advance slowly to the door. Are there any other weapons lying around? If so, acquire them and give one to our new bestest friend

>>12327298
How'd he know my favorite soup was cream of Eldar? Ok so now its time for OODA (observe, orient, decide, and act) what we do now guys?

>>12327334
Acquire guns
Stop DEldar from brining in more heavily armed reinforcements,
Free our comrades
try to find a way out of this hell hole

Put a round into the Deldar, just to be safe

>>12327411
No need, just need to get to cover and keep firing.
The cages 'could' work, but on a word we might be stuck back in it

We might need to use the bodys as cover.

Raising your voice to its absolute height you try to scream some sanity back into the Krieger’s head. Like a wind-up-toy running out of torque, he slows, judders, and grinds to a halt, a long breath leaving his lungs. It seems that the blasted creature in his grasp was not, in fact, dead, but it might as well have been – as it drops to its knees the soldier administers a final boot to the forefront of its head, smashing its skull against the bars of a vacant cage.

He snatches its weapon and immediately hunkers down to a firing position behind you, letting off a pair of short bursts.

You turn back in time to see the armoured one darting out of the room, a pair of splinters missing his back by a matter of inches. One of the two that flung itself out of your initial spray seems to move towards orienting himself, and you immediately put a set of shots between his shoulders.

You have no cover, save for the bars of the cages, and they offer minimal protection at best – so far seems that your only advantage is that the two Eldar outside are hesitant to risk ducking out into your line of fire. But you know that this won’t be the case forever...

rolled 10 = 10

>>12327485
AIGHT , LETS GET THESE MEN OUT OF THEIR CAGES , GET THEM ARMED AND GET THOSE DOORS CLOSED AND LOCKED

rolled 10 = 10

>>12327485
use guns to shoot locks off from buddies.
MEAT SHIELD!

hurry up and post OP
i can only keep myself occupied for so long with the other quest.

Trusting your newfound comrade to keep the Eldar at bay, you whirl about, bringing your weapon to bear upon the surprisingly primitive locks keeping your fellows out of the fight. You fire off a few shots, but they seem ineffective – evidently, the Dark Eldar prefer ammunition with better capacity for incapacitating over killing.

A splinter-shot whistles past you, the return fire from the Krieger quickly forcing the shooter back into cover.

>>12327520
Yeah, there's two other splinter rifles up for grabs, We need to get our other buddies out and about and to fighting!
The cheers of other survivors about must be shouting praises for us, We need to get some people out while the krieger gives us suppressive fire.

Smash the locks!

>>12327584

well , fuck
aren't there monoblades sticking out of the splinter rifle? dark eldar love spiky weapons an' shit , use the blades to break the locks while the krieger(whom im officialy naming Hansel) covers us.

also , do we have any more ammo for our rifles?

>>12327584
FUCK!
PRISONERS CAN WAIT
KILL THOSE FUCKERS DEAD
CLOSE DOOR
THEN FREE PRISONERS
PREPARE FOR RAPES TORM

>>12327584
Concentrate on killing those nancy pancy sons of whores.
TERRA STYLE motherfraker.

>>12327610
I lol'd

>>12327598
Why not just toss the weapons into the cages?
They can fire through the slots of the bars

For a moment you glance desperately about for something – anything – with enough heft to smash through the locks. Then, you look down, and curse yourself for thinking like an Arbite. Autoguns don’t have sharp spiky bits for cutting people up. Breaching shotguns don’t have sharp spiky bits for cutting people up (although, sometimes, you wish they bloody well did).

Splinter rifles do, though.

Thanking the Emperor for the Dark Eldar’s irrational love of sticking sharp stuff everywhere, you take the butt of your weapon the locks, the gleaming monoblade at its end shearing through the rusted metal with ease. One by one, they swing open, and freeing the last group of prisoners.

Keel is the first at your side, his heavily-scarred face twisted into a grin.

“Good show, officer. Now let’s get to giving these hairless abominations a bloody nose.”

>>12327719
"Too right sir! Maybe a bleedin' arse while we're at it too, eh?"
ACQUIRE GUNS
GIVE GUNS TO FRIENDS
KILL Deldar
BLOCK OFF POTENTIAL Deldar REINFORCEMENTS

>>12327740
"FOR EPHEBIUS !!! FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"

(God dammit I didn’t mean to make Keel so incredibly 18th Century Brit, it just happened)

-

“Too right, officer,” came the grizzled reply.

With a cry proclaiming the Emperor’s glory, you push on, advancing up towards the end of the hall, where the corpses of two very dead Eldar still cling to their splinter rifles. The pair at the door make a final glance over the threshold, before apparently deciding that it was time to make a tactical retreat – although not before firing a final burst of splinter-rounds into the advancing escapees, eliciting a cry of pain from somewhere behind you.

As they break for it, a final shot by the Krieger slices straight through one of them, bringing him down instantly.

With the final slave-keeper gone, those that can take their pick of the alien weapons scattered about – aside from yourself and the Krieger, there are now three other armed men in this assorted troupe, one of them being Keel, and the others a pair of PDF troopers with a few more years on them than the rest.

>>12327861
Alright, take stock of the situation.
Where are we?
What does the envirnoment offer us tacticaly?
Where can we escape from?
Where can we expect the Deldar to mount a sortie?
how many prisoners can walk?
Check the downed Deldar, see if one them is still breathing- he might provide information.
It's only a matter of time before there's a response from people much better armed, and this time we won't have surprise on our side.

>>12327861
John Keel is pretty damn british sounding.
Also, you ever read nightwatch OP?

>>12327949

Hell yes.

-
>>12327896

The domed chamber outside, lit by a pair of strange, luminous structures at either end, is perhaps one of the worst positions one could ever attempt to defend. No less than five doors are set in its stone walls – four small ones arranged opposite to one-another and a single vast, open passage of hewn stone. There is no cover, and little could be done to make the room suitable for standing and fighting at.

You, the Krieger, Keel, and two other PDF troopers are the only ones truly combat-ready, being the only ones with weapons. One of the others was shot down during the final push, a splinter jutting through his sternum, but the final three – including officer Corvin – are relatively unharmed, save for a minor injury to one’s hand.

The Dark Eldar are very, very dead. That Krieger didn’t mess around.

>>12328027
Alright, fuck.
Break the locks off of as many cages as you can- split the people up into a group for each door. Send one person down each hallway, check to see if the cover is clear.
If they don't come back in five minutes, we'll assume the worse and that the passageway is out.
Work quickly, time is of the essence.

>>12328027

see whats in the doors and if we can find anymore prisoners , or an armoury perhaps

Anybody else want to jump in here?

>>12328027
If nobody else is doing anything, make makeshift weapons, strip the Deldar for armor, anything at this point to give you an edge.

Shit, sorry guys, but I’m gonna have to leave it here for now.

>>12328072

When I continue this, I'll start stuff off with this suggestion.

>>12328137
Sadly they wore no armor, but with luck they might have a knife or even better keys, we need some people to get these cages open and the others should scout ahead after the runners before they can get reinforcements.

>>12328148
when ya gonna be on afain OP

>>12328027
>>12328148
>>12328148
This been archived yet?

bumpin to keep it alive

this thread made me happy, bumpan as well

>>12329471
Don't bump!
ARCHIVE

>>12329690
Question, im relatively new, so what the hell is archive and how do you do it?
also bump, or archive cause this seems like fun.

Abnett level shit achieved, OP, I wish I'd stuck around longer earlier.

Can't wait for part two.

One more bump before class and my laptop dies.
BETTER BE COMING BACK OP!
If ur not back in 2 hours, heresy will fuck you in the ass.

BUMPETH AGAIN!

q