Retaliation part 1

In which Lelith gets shown that some mon-keigh do not quite live up to their own highly set standards. 


Story: Retaliation part 1
Author: torture-device

Lord Vect seemed in need of some serious R&R after the last part. I can only laugh at his predicament and weakness. My dear Asdrubael, I thought you were more resilient to the pain that can be inflicted upon one's person. You're eladrith ynneas, act like it. 

Before we dive into the next part, we need to acquaint ourselves with its author, because it is not WalkingMaelstrom anymore. It is Torturer's creator: torture-device. 

Although, that name is a little misleading, even if it does show nicely that Torturer was meant as a self-insertion Gary-Stu character from the start and something that would explain his obnoxious being, although a lot of that can be ascribed to WalkingMaelstrom's awful writing. 

Torture-device is - hold on to your hats, lords and ladies of the Dark City - a Russian Nazi. Even if it does say Norway as his country of origin on his frontpage on DevianTART, there is enough Cyrillic on his page and in the comments at times, to nicely give away that he's indeed Russki. Not to mention he will gladly correct anyone who thinks he is Norwegian. 

If you take a stroll through his galleries you will notice that apart from needing a strong stomach (even by dark eldar standards) to make it through, there's a risk of becoming seriously bored, as the theme varies very little. It's blood, guts and gore, mixed in with fanart for Warhammer 40k and a series of celebratory portraits of famous spreekillers, such as Timothy McVeigh. Inspiring for my kind, but positively disturbing as it is a mon-keigh displaying these traits. A central theme is usually the denigration of women. I can see why he and WalkingMaelstrom work so well together. 

The guy has also been banned from DevianTART a total of four times, coming back like a distorted Jack-in-the-Box each time, either because he truly likes the community or because he lacks better sense. These regenerative abilities easily makes him more powerful than humanity's corpse of a God-Emperor. It was during his last account, just prior to the current, that he made his true e-fame over there. He also had a stab at ConceptArt.org, like many TARTlets, but that did not work out so well. 

But I will admit, the man has some serious artistic chops. That's just the problem though. Thanks to the wonders of the Wayback Machine, one can take a stroll through his old accounts on DevianTART, and although he has developed well in pure technical terms, he has not developed at all in choice of motifs. They are still the very same as back in 2005, when he first joined up as Deathwisher88. 

My Lord Vect has already recanted how torture-device, in all his Internet Tough Guy-ness, teamed up with WalkingMaelstrom but what he did not touch upon is that torture-device, according to his journal, works as a journalist, which means he does writing for a living. 

Perhaps this means we can expect some better writing, now that we switch authors in this "epic saga". 

The first attack had no effect. Moerchen, or whatever was left of him in the deformed shell, blocked the blow with a clawed, bony gauntlet, swiping the force staff aside and nearly ripping it out of the Librarian's had [sic!] as the protruding spikes dragged along the power unit. 

But I wouldn't count on it. 

This part begins where the last left off, with Epistolary Cailean facing off against the daemonically possessed Chaplain Moerchen. I'll let Lord Vect's reaction to the revelation that Moerchen housed a daemon inside him all this time stand in for my own reaction. 

Though apparently I am not the only one with trouble to accepts facts, as Cailean blurts out, 

"Snap out of it, Moerchen!" he yelled and leapt aside. "Emperor witness to my words, I don't want to kill you!" 

as if a daemonic possession is just something you shrug off. I've got an offspring of the Eater of Souls in me. No biggie! I'll just walk it off! 

The daemon of course finds this highly amusing and Cailean looks for support in his notion to try to spare the creature from his comrades-in-arms, but finds none. It should be noted that he has by now seemingly forgotten his great rage and sadness at the death of his battle-brother, Ashur. As has torture-device, because there's no mentioning of Ashur's body, at all. 

The daemon in Moerchen's body recognises Veridus as the weakest link, simply because he is the youngest. I don't know about you, but in my experience even newly indentured Space Marines can give wyches some trouble if they don't watch out. Also, torture-device spells it Veridus, whereas WalkingMaelstrom spelled the name Verdius. Fantastic! Even the authors can't bother to double-check they got the names spelled right! 

Anyway, the daemon launches itself at Veridus/Verdius, who enters into a poorly-edited battle with it: 

The daemonhost, however, didn't waste time on empty regrets. It set many of its glossy oculars on Veridus, quickly calculation him to be the weakest link, and charged. In a long feral leap, the ex-Chaplain closed the distance between himself and the youngest tactical marine, his right hand dissolving into a blackened haze of a rapid mutation. He descended on Veridus.  A forked claw, riddled with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth attempted to close on the marines neck, to cut and decapitate in one move but Veridus managed to duck. The claw swooped above his head, but that wasn't the end of it. Veridus was so focused on the pseudopod mutation, that he didn't take in account the monsters field of vision. 

Something tugged at his sword, something stopped it from plunging into the daemonhosts belly. Tentacles, formed from the arm of his left hand constricted around the blade, jamming the whirring teeth. With one inhumanly powerful tug, the ex-Chaplain ripped the chainsword out of Veridus's grip, and counterattacked with the claw again, this time aiming to get ahold of the marines leg. 

Disarmed, Veridus fell into a paralyze as he watched the overgrown limb dart down to his knee, opened wide to increase its eviscerating strength – then instinctively jerked away as he saw it erupt in a fountain of black, foul-smelling blood. 

And here we notice a few things about torture-device's writing. The most obvious is that he has not bothered to proof-read this even once, with some sentences making no grammatical sense as a result. He can't blame English not being his primary language, as he is able to make himself perfectly well-understood in his Journals, and these give the impression of at least in the longer cases being written down beforehand. No, this is just lazy. 

Second are the run-on sentences. This particular excerpt has no examples of them, but trust me, they are there. Another problem is linked to this. Again, there are only a few in this particular quotation, but more often than not torture-device simply forgets the apostrophe necessary before the 's' of the possessive case, turning many words instead into plurals. This is such a basic component of the English language that he simply has no excuse. Had he bothered to go back and proof-read what the fuck he had written, I am pretty certain it would have been caught. But no, torture-device is lazy. 

The next problem is the purple prose. WalkingMaelstrom suffered from this badly too, but torture-device's is of a different kind. WalkingMaelstrom's was of the more traditional, Thesaurus-abusive kind. Torture-device's stems from simply not knowing what word to use, and probably picking the first word that pops up in whatever translating machine he uses, when he types it in in Russian. He doesn't bother to look up definitions or anything. Hence why you get a sentence in which the word "oculars" is used instead of the more common "eyes". Seriously. 

Lastly, he simply writes a lot of verbs out in the wrong tense altogether. It happens on such a consistent basis I am curious to whether he actually knows in what tense he writes. 

Anyway, back to the battling morons. 

Veridus - or is it Verdius? - is saved from becoming daemon-food by Sergeant Seo, as Veridus obviously can't defend himself using a chainsword... and Seo apparently can. Seo quickly gets into a heap of trouble too with the thing and is thus in turn saved by the, need I remind you, badly wounded "Epistolarry". 

One of the three Stooges: Larry the E-pistol.

Cailean gets a hold of the head of the daemon and tries to exorcise the daemon from Moerchen's body. 

"GET OUT! IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR I CONDEMN YOU TO LEAVE THIS MAN!" 

That goes about as well as you can guess. We have already established that Cailean is pretty incompetent at basic Librarian duties, like the conserving and passing-on of information. 

The daemon throws Cailean off with relative ease and sets after Veridus again (why?) only to be knocked flat by a powerful beam of energy. Knocked flat. Not evaporated. 

Then another beam struck Moerchen's backpack, sending him sprawled and convulsing as the power had been cut, the warp entity not able to sustain mutations of the armor without it. 

That was when they heard the high-pitched hum of engines. Cailean followed the trail of yet another shot, which nearly missed Seo, and saw something most unnerving and unexpected. 

The source of the humming-bird engines is soon revealed to be a small group of craftworlder jetbikes. Now, I don't know, nor do I care, much about the transportation methods and abilities of my flaccid craftworld-dwelling cousins, but they must've arrived from somewhere, right? The jetbikes suggest that they have arrived from a ship somewhere, or possibly even a webway portal, but to suddenly appear like this? And the Epistolary did not sense it? At all? Even when engaged in battle, the activation of a webway must've at least sent a tingle down his spine. 

What puzzles me even more is that the storm troopers, veterans of battles with six-limbed monstrosities on board space hulks, are seemingly afraid of a group of five jetbikes. As they approach, Cailean calls his battle-brothers to him and they stand, back to back, and await the incoming jetbikers. The daemon does so as well, it would seem, as nothing more is said of it more than that it struggles to reform the backpack that was blasted to bits. 

The apparent leader of the group of eladrith jumps off his yellow and light blue jetbike, and Cailean recognises him as that because he's wearing a helmet that is both minimalistic and generously adorned with gemstones. 

The daemon does not take well at all in the arrival of what I guess to be a farseer. 

"youyoufuckinginsolentspawnoftheelderfodderforthegreatgod!" 

The farseer proceeds to idly kick the daemonically possessed chaplain in the gut, a kick that is so hard it makes the ceramite armor crack. Maybe I should put that picture above, down here instead... 

Cailean doesn't like that, so he says so, and follows it up with some random italics, which I think are meant to be Cailean's thoughts but no indication is made that they do belong to him. 

"No!" yelled Cailean. "Don't kill him! You can't, he's an innocent man!"  

"If it's anyone to end Moerchen's life, it should be me. It's my burden and the last thing I could for him."  

Amazing that the apostrophes are all in their place here. 

One of the jetbike riders then clarifies for the dense mon-keigh that the warlock knows what he's doing- wait, warlock? I thought the leader of the group was a farseer? Either way, the warlock wants to do the only decent thing and kill the rapidly mutating abomination before it can wholly manifest, but Cailean manages to convince them not to, after having got some support after psychically talking to Sergeant Seo, a man who in Prelude to the Rapture part 1 did not like having his mind invaded. This time around, he seems pretty sanguine about Cailean barging into his mind unbidden. 

It soon becomes clear the eldar are after Torturer as well. I cannot fathom why. Why would even our miserable craftworld cousins spend a second glance on a third-rate pirate such as Torturer? Cailean seems to think him so evil that he has trouble saying Torturer's - assumed - name out loud. Even after the warlock gives a very general description of him, Cailean has to growl the name to get it out. 

"A Chaos Champion that crucifies his victims on his armor and has a mask on his face?" 

"Torturer!" Growled Cailean. "The damn warpshit traitor!" 

I have to smile indulgently at the attempted swear-word here. Not only does it feel incredibly out of place in the mouth of a psycho-indoctrinated, genetically enhanced monstrosity such as a Space Marine, a creature with more in common with the haemonculi's grotesques than either side would want to admit, but it is also incredibly silly. 

Cailean then spills the beans that he failed to banish the daemon, which only earns him the rightful derision from the warlock for his incompetence. In a complete heel-face-turn, though, the warlock then proceeds to offer to help the Imperials with the banishment, of course in exchange for a little something.  

The price is what little information the Imperials can give on Torturer (which I have to say is not much, though I wonder why the warlock doesn't just wrench the needed information from the head of Cailean? Is this another display of the craftworlders' so-called honor?). Seo, swiftly becoming some sort of voice-of-reason as well as the man who moves the stalling plot along, suggests this is a prudent course of action, even if "the Council" would not agree. 

Wait, what "Council"? He can't be talking of the craftworlders' Council of Seers, as that does not apply to the mon-keigh. Do Space Marines have Councils now, instead of a leading Chapter Master? Obviously not the Imperial Paladins, as they have a named chapter master: Quintus. Methinks this is just another case of torture-device not bothering to do his research. Because he's lazy. 

The content of two pages of chatter back and forth is that yes, the eldar may help them. During all this time, the daemon has been suitably weak to be held down by the boot of the warlock. The still-unnamed warlock then tells Cailean what to do: his role is to "hold the soul in place" as the warlock pries the daemon out. Again, what? I don't know much about psychics, but I am pretty certain it doesn't quite work like that. A soul is not easily held in place as if it was a simple piece of meat. 

At least it leads to us getting a look at the warlock's face as he tears his helmet off. He's pretty average, by my estimate. 

The warlock, after jamming his sword in Moerchen's chest and then pulling it out, gets a rune out of a pouch and jams it into the chest instead. 

Cailean fought with all his minds to keep the Chaplains soul bound to the body, his fingertips being set aflame as he coursed his energy to mend the damaged done by both the wound and the daemon.  In his concentration he didn't even feel how his psychic hood began overheating, the wiring starting to melt down and give out. The mix of emotions from both entities had begun to override his weakened consciousness. 

The exorcism proceeds according to plan (one of the few things in this story that does so, and all it took was an Eldar) and the daemonic entity leaves Moerchen. 

Cailean then suddenly grabs the warlock's phantom blade and strikes the daemon, making it explode and sending both him and the warlock, but not Moerchen's body it'd seem, flying some 50 feet before landing, without hurting or killing them. 

I just... what? How is that- 

You know what, fuck it! I'll just stop trying to bring logic and reason into a story which is so gleefully insane. I mean, if the authors did not bother with such niggly details such as the laws of physics, then why should I? 

And after that, we are introduced to Warlock Devonar of Craftworld Ulthwé, which is here spelled Ulthwe. 

The jetbikes were described as being light blue and golden yellow. This is what a seer council of that craftworld looks like according to the archives of the Dark City: 

Please note the black and bone color of their robes and armor. 

On that blatant disregard for the source material, we leave to see what is going on with the slaves of She Who Thirsts: 

Torturer collapsed right after the rendezvous with the "Engine of Obscenity", when the bloodied, exasperated marines finally got out of the Thunderhawk and unto the cargo deck of the mothership. 

Just one question: why the fuck isn't that pink dildo-ship blown out of the orbit of Grexx already? Does it have a cloak? If so, why is that never mentioned? Grexx is an Imperial world, and even the smallest of those worlds have massive orbital defences. That is why we dark eldar, when we go on raids, rely on the webway to bring us out where we need, so we don't have to risk going toe-to-toe with the Imperial Navy's artillery. It is only common sense. 

Torturer's collapse was apparently foreseen by Malexis as a side-effect of Ekstase, his newly made combat drug. Razorwire, being a dickhead, sees his opportunity and proceeds to stab the prone and unconscious leader of the Sick Six just to prove a point. This earns him a scolding and a threat from the others and nothing more. 

I have two issues with this scene: How can Zekkel even be a Space Marine, a creature bred for war and only that, when he is so utterly useless in a fight? He's the only one who is actually wounded in the group, and he's managed to lose an entire leg. 

Secondly, the backstory to Ignis, while welcome in that it gives us more to go on than "samurai parody in both action and word" in terms of a character, it comes at precisely the wrong time to grind the already slowing pace of the story to a halt for all of a page, as the author stops to soliloquise over the background to his ultra-special Original Character. A few lines would've sufficed, really. This is so-called heinleining at its worst. 

And on that note, the first part of Retaliation ends. With Razorwire stabbing and then spitting on Torturer's unconscious body. 

I'd have more respect for him if he'd been the cause of Torturer's fainting, but he isn't. As it stands, he just got upgraded from dickhead, to assmuncher. 

_____________________________________________________________

I want to summarize this by first saying that it could have been worse. Much worse. As badly edited and un-proof-read as this is, it is at least obvious, below the insanity, that torture-device does indeed write for a living. 

The trouble is that he is lazy about it. Misplaced words, missing possessive forms, wonky grammar and misspellings abound. If he actually spent more time than an afternoon's worth writing this, I would be amazed. This is something he shat out in one sitting and then called done. 

Another problem is that he seems to think the genhanced monstrosities the mon-keigh call Astartes are just bigger, stronger humans, and he makes them speak like hive scum. It just comes across as if torture-device hasn't understood the source material. 

That being said, it is easily the most enjoyable part so far, although it isn't up against the stiffest of competition. As a matter of fact, the competition is rather more flaccid and formless, so I guess this is a hollow victory for our Russian nazi. 

I'm off to see if Lord Vect has recuperated from his last venture into the realm of Rivals til Death. If not, well, he'll just have to grow thicker skin. 

A wych knife can work wonderful motivation when applied to the correct parts. He's not dumping me alone on this one! 

//L//

Symphony of Chaos part 2

In which the all-powerful Supreme Overlord makes shocking discoveries, and is nearly lost to space-time anomalies...

Story: Symphony of Chaos part 2

Author: WalkingMaelstrom

So there I was, enjoying a good game of Strip-Dawn Blade Hold with the twin jetbiker sisters Aeolith and Myrnanras, pondering the matter of this next reading while I distractedly won the blade-brassières of the girls, when I (the all-knowing Archon of the Kabal of the Black Heart) came to an epiphany that shook my understanding of Rivals Til Death.

I then killed Myrnanras for accepting favors from Dracon Korask and had my way with Aeolith. Seeing her sibling dead excited the girl greatly, I think.

The gorgeous Aeolith is currently hooked from my ceiling, dripping her bodily fluids down on me as I write this, but enough about that sweet little morsel.

You see, I took a peek at this chapter as I got my new toe installed (Rakarth refused the tooth, the poor fool, so after his last cadaver stopped bleeding he agreed to just grow me a new toe of my own) and the first paragraph made me realize something.

Note every physical characteristic of Cailean as shown here. He is, most obviously, a filthy little psyker (and by nature apparently a very powerful one), he can use his power to kill things, although he rarely ever does this, and is instead only ever depicted using his fists and various weapons. He is also capable of a Dragonball Z-style "power-up" technique that consists of looking constipated and screaming at the top of one's lungs.

He also has blonde hair and blue eyes, like the cute superior race-spawn that he is.

Pay mind to this image WalkingMaelstrom also commissioned of (brace yourselves) a Naruto/Warhammer crossover.

In the grim darkness, there is only bad premise.

Ewgh. I feel violated.

Well, not the best example, I suppose, because apparently Naruto's eyes are able to change to red. Look at this one instead:

A HIGHLY ACCURATE DEPICTION.

You'll notice the blue eyes and blonde hair. Naruto is also able use magical abilities (and is apparently naturally great at it), but does not use them particularly as often as he should. He is, like Cailean, capable of shit-taking power-up squats and is very short-sighted and easily angered as well. He is also the target of several people who he has angered in the past.

It may seem like a stretch at the moment, but in time, I suspect you'll come to appreciate just as I do that Cailean is (intentionally or not) Naruto Uzumaki infiltrating Warhammer 40,000.

Now, this also does wonders to explain various other things in the story. Torturer's "To think I wasn't going to use them!" quote is, I am told, practically straight from Naruto's fight with a supervillain who also calls on the support of others to pointlessly draw out a fight for another 40 pages. His insistence that a person can jump twenty feet into the air is a rip straight from Kishimoto's stain of a manga.

Even his insistence on idiotic inner monologues to point out the obvious is lifted straight from Naruto.

Key to the series, however, is the fact that this easily explains his blatant, mindless sexism. I doubt he's ever met a girl in his life, because he thinks a woman - scarred countless times by battle - who has murdered alien horrors aboard a clump of warp-spat space wrecks should be frightened over a Space Marine, or a lost hand, or a couple of cultists. The women in his stories, by and large, are worthless, moody, and taken to revering his beefcake characters.

One might think Inquisitor Tina to be a contradiction, what with how she literally leapt into the fray, but as you're about to find out, she is most certainly not.

In fact, she actually belongs to the most obnoxious of all tropes in existence, sharing a spot with every damned fictional princess that ever existed.

I must warn you as we reach the precipice of this part: this is the very worst chapter yet.

WalkingMaelstrom starts us off with, again, more restatement of the blatantly obvious, because he seems to think he needs to remind of us what happened in the last segment.

Cailean shook with anger.  Not only has he failed to kill this heretic, but doing so cost him one of his dear friends and several other loyal Imperial citizens.  Every wasted moment meant more would die.  He couldn't take it.  Nulli Secundum crackled wildly, the rage adding to his power.  "HERETIC!  I WILL KILL YOU!"

It's all very humorous and cute to make fun of him for telling us what we already know, but the problem is that he's doing this to pad this series so densely that I keep each part away from the other for fear of them altogether producing a gravitational singularity.

And this does not help the writing at all. As I said in the review of The Vessel of His Wrath, WalkingMaelstrom lacks any feasible grasp of word economy. I should also comment that he probably does not know what "economy" means: Lelith pointed out to me over dinner that he uses awkward words such as "impetus" and "chagrin" in close proximity to one another. The man is humping a thesaurus as he writes!

Back on track.

Cailean apparently immediately breaks out into a charge in his sheer rage, moving with "blinding speed" over whatever distance it is he needs to cover, which suggests he has activated the Quickening again.

 Inquisitor Tina apparently also can sense disturbances in the ground by kicking others.

Tina, blocking a blow from Zekkel, kicked him away only to feel the ground shake beneath her feet, the power of Cailean clearly visible to her and Moerchen. 

She then comments aloud, in spite of her intense fight with the possessed marine,

"Such power…Cailean…" 

Again, because she is a woman and therefore must gape in awe at anything some man does.

But in spite of the incoming one-ton mass of MAN, Torturer just doesn't give a fuck, and at this juncture I must once more question the distance between these two opposing parties. Torturer acts like Cailean is running at him from across a large field, casually turning to idly jest and to give orders to his out-of-nowhere daemonettes, before he promptly just flies away.

And for a man enraged by the death of his bestest best friend, Cailean is very talkative.

"YOU DON'T RUN FROM ME, COWARD!"

    "For a psyker, you aren't very smart when it comes to understanding what I meant by pressing matters.  I'll leave you in the company of my retinue.  Ta." 

And for a man standing in the heat of battle with a pain-train coming at him, Torturer speaks in such an unwieldy, disjointed manner that it defies even the text bubble nature of the shitty Japanese comics WalkingMaelstrom learned to write from.

So Torturer flies away in apparently the exact moment that Cailean is reaching out to put him in a chokehold, which once again begs the question of proximity. If Cailean was so close he "could get a grasp" on Torturer, that implies he could have grabbed his leg and dragged him back to earth or something... if Cailean wasn't utterly incompetent.

Lelith and I (great Supreme Overlord that I am) have already commented extensively on the fact that WalkingMaelstrom doesn't understand the difference between a jump pack and a jet pack, but we'll suffice it to say Torturer goes flying across the indeterminable expanse of the battlefield to go pester Apothecary Malexis, who is, despite the aggregate incompetence of the rest of his team, holding off against a group of Adeptus Mechanicus magi and the Apothecary Haruch.

On the way, Torturer recognizes that Zekkel is apparently getting his ass handed to him by Inquisitor Tina Fey, and a remark is made from his perspective:

It was a larger concern that Zekkel had gone it alone against the Inquisitor.  He wasn't meant to be the melee type, more a motivational member.

That's right. A possessed former Word Bearer dark apostle is getting his ass handed to him by a mortal woman, whose neck he could easily just break with a nice backhand like Cailean demonstrated in The Vessel of His Wrath. More amusingly, WalkingMaelstrom also classifies his characters like they have fucking stat-lines and ability ratings.

But Torturer crosses the field and bothers Malexis, and so begins possibly the most fucking retarded three-page spread of senselessness that has yet come from Rivals.

     "MALEXIS!  IT'S TIME!  PREPARE VIAL X!"

"Ooooooh!  Vial X?  Ekstase?  Coming right up, my Lord!" The equipment on his back whirred insanely, multi-colored liquids merging into some sickly purple and red vial.  A clean needle emerged from another mechadendrite and pulled all of the contents into its massive container.  With an insane smile, he looked up to the sky and yelled.  "MY LORD!  YOU ARE READY TO RECEIVE!"

The air whistled as Torturer descended head first, like a human comet, only to flip himself at the last moment and land right next to Malexis, the tremor throwing Lamontes and Haruch down to the ground.  The injector stabbed Torturer directly into the spine, with inhuman precision that made Haruch's stomach churn that such a foul heretic could be so well-versed in the art of combat drugs, a hideous counter to his healing arts.  

Torturer's muscles apparently begin to bulge in spite of his layers of armor. If the effects were so drastic that we need to be informed of it (how it works is beyond me) then that would imply his armor is falling off him as he shatters his exoskeleton.

Interestingly, nobody bothers to shoot this pile of warp stained cunt-discharge, and instead listens as he begins ranting and "raving on and on".

"YESSSSSS…YESSSSSSS!  OH THE RUSH…I FEEL IT AGAIN!  GET INTO EVERY BLOOD CELL, EVERY ORGAN, EVERY PART OF ME!  MAKE ME FEEL WHAT I'VE BEEN MISSING!"

Inquisitor Tina can apparently hear this, which indicates that they are close enough to be within earshot over the sounds of fighting (presumably gunfire, shouting, jet jump pack ignition at the least) so they must be fairly close. If this drug Torturer just took is enhanced by the warp, wouldn't the null standing here be enough to wreck his shit and the shit of these daemons that have supposedly been inhabiting his armor the entire time?

Maelstrom's comprehension of phyical laws and their relation to the space-time continuum comes in once again as Moerchen apparently shouts "GNNNNAHHH!", whatever that word means, to the Lady as Torturer fires a random blastmaster, I think.

"End of the line for you…heretic.  Let me make this quick." With Hope held high, she readied herself for the thrust into his chest.  Before she could, a powerful sound blast came screaming at her.

"MY LADY!" Moerchen shoved her to the side and took the blast.  "GNNNNAHHH!"  He flew twenty feet back before landing on his back.

"MOERCHEN!" Tina cried out.

At first I was surprised to find Moerchen had somehow covered the distance between himself and Razorwire and the inquisitor's fight with Zekkel, but it seems they up and stopped fighting offscreen and so Inquisitor Tina and Moerchen were together at the start of the chapter (which supposedly takes place immediately after Symphony of Chaos part 1).

But more importantly, this is the sort of space-time continuity problems I have with this. WalkingMaelstrom has Moerchen do this because he thought it would be badass for the chaplain to take the hit, but logic indicates that the Lady apparently heard this onrushing sound first, then Moerchen shouted at her, then he jumped, and then he got hit. What, is the atmosphere of this planet ridiculously thin or something? Are sonic weapons this debilitatingly slow here? If we even begin to start pulling at the loose threads of logic here, the entire thing just comes apart.

What comes next makes no sense and each time I begin to press upon it, my mind begins to pulse with the precursors of a very potent migraine. But let me give you the run-down.

Apparently Chaplain Moerchen has had a daemon in his body the entire time and was never either exorcised or killed for it, despite being an enormous threat to the security and integrity of his chapter. Torturer somehow gets the better of Moerchen and coaxes the daemon to possess the chaplain, resulting in a scene that was clearly never proof-read with things like "bulged muscled" and an extreme repetition of the word "helmet".

Lovely though this picture is, I fear it does not effectively illustrate this scene.

So now that Moerchen's deep dark secret is out, everyone suddenly stops fighting and has a nice talk about it. Ignis, enormous wapanese twit that he is, mentions to Seo,

"We knew of that chaplain and his secret.  Lord Torturer told us so.  It was all part of his plan.  Rather perfect, would you not agree?"

Yes, he knew about the chaplain and his secret but forgot to mention Inquisitor Tina is a null. Nice job.

So, after Torturer implies Inquisitor Tina is not actually a "Lady",

"YOU BEAST!  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?!?"

"Oh…something long overdue, my 'Lady.'"

It is revealed to us that this fight has occurred over the span of an hour.

How?

How could this have possibly taken an hour?

Fuck-nothing has happened at all in the last two parts, and by the time that we are informed that there was little progress between Ashur and the Noise Marines, five minutes had passed since the start of the battle. Have these people just been shooting and swinging into the air the entire time, because it is impossible to go so long with so little death.

So while everyone is gawking at possessed Moerchen, Torturer decides to kidnap Inquisitor Tina in yet another fine example of zero proofreading:

Torturer signaled Zekkel as he grabbed Tina and with a quick injection of tranquilizer to the side of her neck that rendered her unconscious. 

And in a flurry of caps-locked boisterous exclamations, he calls down a random Thunderhawk to get them out of there, rather than teleporting away again.

BUT JUST THEN!  Epistolary Cailean jumps onto the Thunderhawk as it flies off!

"This fucking Librarian…"

 My thoughts precisely, dear Torturer! Needless to say, it doesn't go so well, and Cailean apparently falls to his death is entirely unharmed by his drop from a high-speed aircraft.

Torturer then kills the last of the noise marines sent to him by Eleaxus, because the guy was trying to extort him. He then finds out this mysterious box the noise marines were carrying contains an extremely powerful bomb.

Well, taking cues from me now, are we, o Flawless One?

But regardless, Eleaxus's ineptitude in trying to kill Torturer's band means that now the Sick Six are free of him and all other influence.

Back on the ground.

In the time Moerchen's daemon has had control of his body, it has done absolutely nothing at all despite possessed creatures having a track-record of immediately going on mass-slaughter sprees. Cailean, seeing this thing, finishes off by vowing to kill it. In spite of his previous friction with the chaplain, Cailean ends the part, saying,

"My brother…forgive me."

---~~~---

Precisely what do we get out of this part?

I think it's a little different for everyone. For me, it was a most tragic case of diarrhea.

But in all seriousness, this part left me feeling severely ill. I need to go lead a raid or something before I dry up like one of the river-pickers.
And I also need to get Aeolith's body down from the ceiling before it rots...

Busy busy, so very busy! Stay sane, my subjects!

- V.

Symphony of Chaos part 1

In which the mistress of the Cult of Strife finds herself in a fight surrounded by walls (of text) in what is most likely the longest review this blog will ever see. 


Story: Symphony of Chaos part 1 
Author: WalkingMaelstrom 

So it seems the last part was mostly posturing, if Lord Vect is to be believed. I somehow think he is still mad at me for removing his favorite toe, despite having it replaced. When I opened my weapon locker today, a tyranid ripper leapt out at me, intent on gnawing my face off. I despatched it with a simple bash to the face.

In the locker I also found the next part in this series of stories, along with the last one carrying Vect's annotations. Humorous though it is to see him suffer, I do feel that this time the joke is on me.

The story starts off with a literal blast as the Sick Six dive away to reveal the Noise Marines with Blastmasters, prompting Sergeant Seo to yell in ALL CAPS that they must all dodge. The Imperials all escape the blast, apart from Moerchen who is winded a bit, prompting Inquisitor Fey to ask if he's hurt. My dear, he's wearing power armour, I think he's fine! 

"Are you hurt, Moerchen?" Tina asked. 

"No, m'lady.  I am fine and will exact such an offense tenfold." 

"Good." She turned towards the Noise Marines! 

See? Oh, and that's a wild exclamation mark appearing out of nowhere. Get used to them. They are everywhere in this story. 

Next we get this gem:

"FIRE!" Xin cried out and the hellguns were ablaze.  They peppered the Noise Marines but failed to kill at least one of them.  Still the Noise Marines unleashed another barrage, one of which sent two of her troops flying backwards with one unfortunate soul having his body bisected from the waist down.  The other died on impact.  Already she was two down.  "COVER!  SEEK COVER!" 

There was an audible slapping noise in my room as my palm met my forehead at that. Good-bye what little respect I could have held for Lt. Xin. I won't even go into the horrid writing and misuse of words, not to mention the misplaced modifiers that are more common than gretchin, because if I did, we would be here all day. 

Now, dearie, when facing power armored monstrosities in the service of She Who Thirsts, the order is: seek cover first, THEN fire upon them. See, not that hard. Or is it too much for your puny mon-keigh brain to handle? 

Xin then gets slapped around by Sergeant Ignis, who only has scorn for her:

"You die now, woman!" 

Considering Sergeant Ignis, as drawn by WalkingMaelstrom's friend torture-device, looks like this

 

that comment can be construed as sort of racist. And sexist at the same time. Double-whammy!

She is lucky, as Seo swoops in and saves her bacon, by being even more sexist in his comments towards her. That apparently gets this veteran storm trooper stormtrooper to move and take cover. Seo, being an idiot, takes his attention from Ignis and is duly smacked over the face for it (though not with a chainsword as one could have hoped), and we leave the two sergeants staring each other down like that. 

Instead, the scene shifts to this:

Bolter shells, sound waves, and laser screamed through the air like rain.  The din of battle, the chaos, all were being drowned in it, save for three.  There in the middle of it all, stood the heretic Torturer and his prey, the Librarian and Inquisitor.  He stood there, arms crossed, head slightly tilted, with a sick smile on his face.  A bolter round smacked the ground near his feet but he was as solid as a rock.  Fume flew in the air right behind him, a frag grenade catching him slightly unawares, yet Torturer still stood firm.  He knew his comrade would be all right.  All that concerned him was right in front of him.  His mask opened up wide as if it wanted to taste the air of carnage. 

And these people are left alone why? No answer is given, ever. Also, I like how it is implied by the text that rain screams. Maybe it does on the daemon worlds Torturer has visited, but if the rain started doing that out in normal space, I would be concerned. It can't be heralding anything but a daemonic invasion. 

Oh, and the image of Fume flying through the air like a ragdoll is actually quite funny, but for all the wrong reasons. 

So, Tina and Torturer banter for a while, before Cailean butts in and tells Tina the obvious, because he wanted to "aired on the side of caution". This just after he says: 

"Really, Inquisitor?  Look...we have to work together to defeat him, but be wary of your null aura.  I will easily rob me of my powers." 

WalkingMaelstrom is the undisputed master of proof-reading and dialogue. Either that or he's going to great pains to portray everybody involved, Cailean in particular, as massive idiots. 

They banter a bit more before Torturer pulls out two sonic blasters from behind his back and fires them at Inquisitor Fey and Librarian Cuntmunch Cailean. 

Wait a minute.

According to torture-device, Torturer looks like this:

Poor Hellion...

That's a power fist. Nevermind that sonic blasters, from my experience, are two-handed weapons easily the size of boltguns, but how the fuck does one pull the trigger of a gun with a power fist? HOW? Is the answer simply that neither WalkingMaelstrom nor torture-device have any idea of what the fuck the former is actually writing? I hope so, because the alternative is that neither cares, and that makes me wonder why they bother with this in the first place. 

Whatever. The next paragraph does wonderfully encapsulate WalkingMaelstrom's inability to write. 

She nodded.  Given the lack of a telepathic bond the two could've shared, she could at the very least get the gist of his plan.  She leapt back and fired at him with her plasma pistol.  The white-hot energy cut through the air and right to him.  He leapt to the side and faced Cailean's force staff waiting for him.  Activating his jet pack, he screamed out of the arc of Cailean and back towards a good firing position. 

This paragraph not only indicates Lady Fey is firing her gun at Cailean but also shows that yes, WalkingMaelstrom does think an Astartes jump pack is equivalent to a jet pack. 

Cailean then unleashes the Quickening. 

This is a Space Marine psychic power that makes him super-fast, and Cailean gets a shot in at Torturer, who flies through the air only to crash into Razorwire. WalkingMaelstrom also consistently, throughout the story, refers to Razorwire as a Devastator, despite that the title for the heavy support infantry of the Chaos Space Marines is in fact Havoc. 

Torturer and Razorwire exchange some banter too, before the former flies off. What is important to note from that exchange is that the battle has gone on for some 5 minutes by now. 

The scene stays with Razorwire, as he starts firing on Inquisitor Tina and the two ALSO banter some, whilst exchanging potshots. For being a fighty part in this story, there is an awful lot of talking going on! Tina, being an incompetent dolt, is first saved by a storm trooper, who later dies in a pile of cultists, and then by Chaplain Moerchen, who like many chaplains wears a rosarius. Many, not all. Apparently. 

Oh, and the writing implies that Moerchen can also fly. 

The Rosiarius...a blessed item bestowed to many Space Marine Chaplains.  He had landed and activated it in the nick of time, the refractor field blunting the bolter shells. There stood the Chaplain in his glory, is crozius alive with power and purity seals flapping in the breeze, the din music to his ears.  His breathing was heavy but that of anger. 

Moerchen and Tina exchange dialogue with Razorwire, who gets sudden, and unwanted, aid from Zekkel. Razorwire tells him to fuck off. Essentially. 

A swarm (WalkingMaelstrom's words) of Slaaneshii cultists have also arrived to the fight by now, fuck knows where from.

And that's the thing! The scene of the fight is supposedly a random field, I think, on the planet Grexx, so I'm confused as to how they found this field specifically. See, it is never specified anywhere where this is taking place, whether it is indoors or outdoors. There is a table present though, and facilities to serve warm tea, this much we know, which is why I can't rule out the indoors option.

With the cultists nearing and being a distraction for the storm troopers, Zekkel picks a fight with Moerchen. 

"Very well."  He gestured towards Moerchen with his mock crozius.  "Come, you deluded slave, you foolish sycophant of the Corpse God!  Let's have ourselves some sport!" 

Moerchen manages to see through this, notices Zekkel's black and purple eyes and realises he's possessed, so sends Inquisitor Fey at him instead. As stated, she's a null (sometimes) and this will throw the daemon inside Zekkel off-balance. Moerchen will deal with Razorwire. 

"Wisely said,  Moerchen."  She drew herself  into a charging stance.  "Ready?" 

"At your command." 

She built up the air in her lungs and let it out in fury. 

"CHAAAAAARGE!" 

That leads up to this:

Building up enough speed, she roared as she leapt into the air with Hope shimmering under the sun and descended upon Zekkel.  His crozius met her sword and could barely hold back the power in her hands, her body suspended in the air by sheer energy alone.  She pulled away and swung at his chest, forcing him to leap back. 

You're meaning to tell me a 60 kg-something woman in formfitting armor just forced a 450 kg Space Marine back a step? Bull! Shit! Especially as she is in the air and has no leverage at all. There are few places that better illustrate that Mael is coming from shitty anime into Warhammer 40k. 

But Lady Tina is not the only one being a massive idiot. Torturer is apparently one too, as Zekkel realises what she is (causing the possessed man to call the soulless woman an "abomination" - pot, meet kettle) a tad too late. Why? 

Zekkel was completely unaware that Tina was a blank, a crucial fact Torturer left out during the quick briefing simply due to Torturer himself forgetting.

Didn't Eleaxus tell him to plan meticulously? This is just plain lazy writing, because WalkingMaelstrom realised that Zekkel not knowing about Tina's blank-status would and should have been something Torturer remembered, the noise raptor himself being a mild telepath. But no. That would not had made for "suspenseful writing". 

In the meantime, Moerchen is having the most homoerotic fight ever conceived (at least unintentionally) with Razorwire, the latter acting like a Teletubbie in demanding more pain to be inflicted on him. 

"HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!  Again!  DO IT AGAIN!" 

So Razorwire also gains power from pain. Interesting though it could have been, it leaves me with a sour aftertaste as he's so gay about it. This is also incredibly childish of me, but try to read the next paragraph without thinking about male-on-male sex: 

Moerchen bellowed as he charged at him with full force, his crozius ready to deliver the finishing blow to his head.  However what he didn't count on was Razorwire to be fully prepared with a charge of his own.  No matter to him of course, the chaplain would still have the upper hand being blessed by the Emperor.  Then Razorwire obtained speed never seen by the chaplain, and thrust his weight into the chest of the loyalist, Moerchen flying back to where he once stood.  It was in the blink of an eye that he had moved so quickly and powerfully.  "Warp power!  Damn it!  The pain merely increased it!" 

"What?!?  Did you really think I was just letting you kill me, you stupid, predictable, loyalist chaplain of the Corpse God?!?  Pain fuels me, excites me, makes me swell with power!  Now get ready for a world of your own pain!" 

Moerchen surprisingly smiled beneath his skull helmet.  He was looking for sport and it seems he found it.  "World of pain, eh?  Bring it." 

In another part of the neighborhood, Sergeant Seo sees what's going on and orders the Devastator Ashur to help the storm troopers against the cultists and Noise Marines. Mind you, he is still fighting Ignis while doing this. The two fight, breaking off to chat a little bit, before continuing to fight. Back and forth, back and forth. Nothing valuable happens. Neither is there any sense of urgency to the fight, as it takes place within the confines of humungous walls of text. I thought the ones in the last part I reviewed was bad. That's nothing compared to this. 

Meanwhile, Torturer and Cailean were alone again in their epic duel. 

And yet the next sentence, cultists run in and fight Cailean, while Torturer takes a breather. Cailean fights these cultists within the confines of walls of text, just like his battle-brother Seo. 

After Cailean has disposed of most of the cultists, Torturer dives back in or so it would seem. Despite the confusing use of too many words, it is obvious that WalkingMaelstrom means that Torturer has been standing next to Cailean all the time, doing nothing, just crossing his arms over his chest. They are interrupted by a sonic blast from a Noise Marine. 

Torturer, obviously angry with nearly having been killed, berates the Noise Marine, which confuses it enough to lose sight of Cailean and thus get promptly killed. Torturer then thanks Cailean for that and they continue their sparring some more.  

It is honestly hard to make out what the flying fuck is going on in this "epic duel", not just because of the bad paragraphing, but also because of the fact that WalkingMaelstrom simply doesn't understand that you can't leave modifiers and prepositions just dangling all over the place. There is no flow to the writing. It has all the poise and grace of a snail on LSD. 

Let's leave those idiots for a bit, as WalkingMaelstrom decides to shift focus to Ashur, the storm troopers, cultists and the daemonettes, which he is still spelling "demonettes". 

The cultists had multiplied and were set upon the stormtroopers, the techpriests, and Brother Ashur. 

It seems the Imperials are losing, considering that the cultists have apparently given birth during the fight. I would not put this beyond slaves to She Who Thirsts though.

They too fight in the confines of walls of text. Marvellous!  

After blowing a virtual horde of enemies apart, Ashur finally decides to put his heavy bolter on the automatic setting, having had it on the semi-auto one all this time. 

Wait, what? 

Anyway, Ashur then porceeds in hosing an onrushing daemonette with a total of 50 bolts (nice round number) before it expires. Makes me think of this: 

I am aware that could easily have been applied to the storm trooper who went out with a bang earlier, though.

It doesn't help that Ashur personally is WINNING! incredibly hard, as a trooper gets her hand cut off. Ashur rushes to her rescue (ignoring all her comrades who are just brutally butchered), to get her away from Foerx's "sound poisons" (try to wrap your head around THAT ONE!). This one trooper, whose name is Rana Hallock, is completely overwhelmed that a Space Marine would want to save cute ickle her. This despite the fact the she, just like her incompetent lieutenant, is an inquisitorial storm trooper. 

"Astartes!" The woman cried out of fear, already intimidated by the sheer size of the man.  To her, she was but a babe in his arms, a toy in the hands of a superhuman. 

The sexism on display is staggering. At the same time it is obvious Mael aimed for the "chivalrous Space Marine" angle, but he misses the target so badly he couldn't have missed it any more if he was aiming in a completely different direction and the target was in another country all together. 

Doing all this, however, takes all of Ashur's concentration (although I am prepared to guess the walls of text managed to confuse him too) and he is badly wounded as the daemonettes close in on him.

Not too far from there, Torturer and Cailean are still going at it. 

 However, his sick self sought some sport, and glancing off to the side, he found it. 

No extra points for alliteration. Instead, I say "Twenty points from Gryffindor!", as this story has gone on for nearly 15 pages now with very little of interest happening, beyond Ashur being wounded. 

The quote from the text shows that Torturer, just like the reader by now, is growing incredibly bored with what is going on. He spots the wounded Ashur and, reading the script and massive character file on Cailean, decides to go after the devastator instead. 

Ashur, being a complete idiot out of plot-convenience, charges Torturer with only his combat knife. Torturer, as stated above, is armed with a power fist. 

What you can expect would happen, happens. 

This terrible, terrible turn of events makes Cailean go "NOOOOOOOOO!" 

Torturer, ever eager to get the final word in, ends part 1 of "Symphony of Chaos" with

"Problem, lapdog?"  

If only the story overall was this dignified. 

 __________________________________________ 

So, what can be taken away from this story is- well, actually, a LOT can be taken away from it and we'd still be just as far ahead. 

The writing is atrocious. Half the time, I have no idea who is doing what to whom, and the other half it makes no sense physically speaking, as characters either gleefully break canon or the laws of physics, both with equal abandon. 

This part is some 15 pages long. What happens in it can be summarised as: The Sick Six plus allies arrive and they fight the Imperials for a bit. Hallock loses a hand. Ashur gets killed. The End! That's it! It is also interesting how Mael forgot the fight between Malexis and Haruch as well as most of what Foerx Fume was up to (when he wasn't flying through the air or shooting sound poisons), or found them too boring to mention. 

Each and every one of the other fights could easily have been truncated and made more interesting to read, being able to include those people in the fight too, and the story would still have been shorter than it is now. Never mind that they are silly, over-the-top and physically impossible. 

And that is not even getting into the non-existent proof-reading: Some sentences change meaning because of the misspellings WalkingMaelstrom make. A few of those I am not even certain are misspellings, as the letters mixed-up aren't even close to each other on a keyboard. 

Let's not even start on the rampant sexism/misogyny. I think I've said all there is to be said on that subject. Makes me wonder if he can actually get worse. 

...

That's NOT a challenge!

I am starting to understand how Lord Vect felt after Vessel of his Wrath now. I don't feel too good either. 

I am actually very glad that I don't have to deal with the second half of this train-wreck of a fight.

Now, how to plant this "dataslate" so that Vect finds it?

//L//

Prelude to the Rapture part 2

In which the invincible Supreme Overlord plunges headfirst into the strangest sequence of events he's seen yet...


Story: Prelude to the Rapture, part 2
Author: WalkingMaelstrom

Well, I suppose dearest Lelith and I have reached an agreement of sorts regarding this series. She will look over every other story in exchange for a fresh batch of those charming Emperor's Children to kill in the arenas. I cannot imagine what made her want them in particular.

Oh, yes, and she also took my left big-toe. In retrospect, I should have been wearing my trusty metal-capped slippers, but she caught me bedding the lovely lhamaean Ilathin on a dare from a harlequin troupe avatar.

But toes can easily be replaced. I'll just make a trip to the underside and have a word with Master Rakarth. I'm thinking I'll have him graft that zoanthrope tooth from Tyran for this one.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes...

The discussion had left Cailean somewhat offended.

Hey, that's how The Vessel of His Wrath left me!

In all seriousness, the opening paragraph of Prelude to the Rapture, part 2 demonstrates how much of a complete dolt Epistolary Cailean is. But  Lady Inquisitor Tina Fey's plan to catch Torturer (like he's some fucking Scooby Doo villain) is apparently to use Cailean's little team as bait?

And she's also offering up an entire planet to Torturer's team, I guess?

Good thing I had a mind-shield in place, because the lack of logic in this brilliant plan just burned it out. I am beginning to suspect this series was a ploy on Malys's part to kill me.

If all Torturer has is a shitty little raider (which apparently is even smaller than a normal human raider, if that comparison to the strike cruiser is to mean anything) then what hope at all does he have of taking over an entire planet? Is it really that hard for them to just kill this miserable warp-spawn?

After seeing one of those Grey Knights kill Archon Saluciaer and his entire guard of incubi, I have to say I think just one of them would suffice to deal with this Torturer--

Oh, you egotistical oaf.

How is that even possible? This glorified gimp cannot even kill a librarian, so how can he hope to stand against a Grey Knight? Isn't Lady Tina part of the Ordo Malleus? Of all inquisitors she has the easiest access to them! A single Purgation squad would probably be enough to deal with this joke of a Chaos champion and his moronic underlings! Why does any of this need to be done? Or is it just that the Grey Knights have already laughed the Lady Inquisitor off as having too trivial a concern? Because from what The Vessel of His Wrath showed us, there really isn't much that makes either party distinguishable.

Ahem. I appear to have lost my cool for a moment there.

Now, while they're doing this...

... the fiend Torturer hovered over the peaceful world of Grexx like a hawk upon a defenseless chick.

I love how the language implies that Torturer himself, not his ship, is presently orbiting Grexx.

I would like to point out that there is a very peculiar anomaly of time in place here. Last part (do you call these chapters, really?) we saw Torturer apparently as far away from Cailean and anything else as possible, snorting more drugs than any sane human should while Cailean goes and speaks with the Lady Inquisitor. He then decides to apparently go to this planet on orders from Eleaxus (who spoke to him from halfway across the galaxy, I might add), and he arrives while Inquisitor Tina and Cailean are still arguing?

So there are several distinct possibilities.

1. The Engine of Obscenity was already conveniently parked over the distinctly Imperial world of Grexx, and nobody (not even the astrotelepathic librarian, nor any other psykers that might and would be present) noticed his dildo-ship in the system.
2. Torturer apparently flew there immediately and arrived as Inquisitor Tina and Cailean were finishing up their deliberations, which would imply that they were arguing for literal days without end.
3. Random fucking shit happened in the warp.
4. WalkingMaelstrom has no perception of time.

So Torturer's plan (that fiendish fiend) is to use eldar technology to get the jump on Cailean by teleporting directly into their meeting, or something. Oh, and somewhere within the time-warp that has plagued the Engine, Eleaxus's people arrived with this artefact.

According to Eleaxus, this piece of technology would allow Torturer and everyone else to simply slip into the world via a beacon planet in secret, another piece stolen from the Eldar. 

I'm not sure I can really glean any information about any of that at all, really. Do human teleportariums (teleportariae? Confound this language!) not have the ability to do all of this without some "beacon planet"? Why should my cousins (inferior as they are) be so utterly useless?

Someone named "Foerz" also shows up on the team because WalkingMaelstrom decided to give one of his characters an absolutely horrible name that he cannot actually spell without copying and pasting.

Now, away from those dolts again, and back to the other group of tedious fools.

WalkingMaelstrom insists on not showing us the actual specifics of any of these groups' plans, for one because they aren't so much plans as they are stupid, and for another because they will be of no use in another five pages. So we continue to get these scenes where we stumble on the Lady Inquisitor and Cailean dusting their hands after the struggle of protracted strategizing. Like this one:

"So we are in agreement, then?" Tina smirked after carefully discussing the plans to bring justice to Torturer to the Imperial Paladins.

"Should blood be shed upon any of my brothers, the chapter will see this filthy Flawless Host burned at the stake." Cailean promised.  "The same would go for you and your group.  We shall see that no harm comes to you as well."

"I am honored indeed.  Ha…look at me.  I cannot remember the last time I had formed an easy rapport with an Astartes psyker."

 But let's back-track a moment, because something needs to be commented on before we go any further.

Inquisitor Tina is, apparently, a null. She lacks a soul, and is indeed painful to psykers. I (as the indomitable Supreme Overlord of Commorragh) would like to comment that in the presence of a (supposedly) strong psyker, she does not even inflict pain on Cailean, let alone discomfort.

The fact that the Inquisitor is soulless makes the fact that her sword talks to her even more absurd:

In its sheath, Hope had started to shake in anticipation of such action.  It longed for the blood of heretics.  "My sword…it's like it's…calling to me.  Is that heretic really that potent that even the sword wants its vengeance?  Am I to really call out this monster and place his head on a plate with my own hands?  Have I been away from conflict that long?"

 I maintain, what the fuck is going on here?

As if that wasn't enough of a joke, Cailean even overwhelms the soulless's null field, like it's no big fucking deal to press his will on a monster that would just eat his mind.

This is apparently why Cailean has no idea what's going on when this happens:

I shit you not, either! This is practically what happens next in a nutshell. Just read this, and I dare you tell me that this doesn't practically parody the above MADTV skit:

Even the Imperial Paladins removed their scowls until Cailean ceased smiling and twitched his lips.  Tina immediately took notice as he held tightly onto Nulli Secundum, his force staff.

"Something troubles you all of a sudden, Cailean?"

He didn't know what it was.  It was like a sudden flash of lightning in his head which ceased the second it occurred.  "I…I'm not sure.  I felt a slight disturbance though, something not right with the atmosphere here."

"I sense nothing, Cailean." Haruch said.

"Neither do I." Moerchen added.

"No…no it's nothing you could have picked up.  None of you could have.  I almost felt as if, we were being watched for but a brief moment."

"Scanners do not indicate anything unusual, my Lady." Xin informed.  The group became wary.

Cailean took several steps back from the Inquisitor.  His pulse quickened as the farther he stepped away, the more the disturbance grew in frequency.  It was not the touch of Chaos though…something…different.  "Something's not right."  He focused on the source of the sensation, his mind trying to grasp every iota of concentration possible.  Then the wailing commenced.  "No…NO!"

"That noise!  What is that noise?!?" Tina screamed as it picked up in volume.  

"It's…it's…sounding like…" Brother-Sergeant Seo struggled to recognize the wailing and moaning, but seconds later his eyes widened as he heard the thunderclaps.  "BRACE YOURSELVES!"

Tina and Moerchen could see the funnels of sound penetrate the sky like a spear through flesh.  Immediately the Chaplain brought himself over the Inquisitor.  "Stay beside me, my Lady!"  Everyone else had tried to find some sort of cover.  The sound waves crashed into the ground, kicking up dirt and debris everywhere and choking the skies with dust.

"ANOTHER BARRAGE!" The sergeant screamed as four more blasts threw the Imperial forces into a panic.  Xin and her stormtroopers tried to form up but one blast had scattered them, preventing them from organization.

Cailean formed a shield with his energy as he took a blast wave head on.  Judging by how easily he blunted it, he felt like it wasn't a killing blow, but merely a warning.  "Him…he approaches us…and without our knowing!  That null…she blocked my ability to see it coming!  Throne damn it!"

"Heh heh heh heh hehhhhh…ha…ha ha…ha…HA HA HA HA!" Maniacal the laughter was through the speakers.  Cailean could hear the jet engine roar letting out its moans of pleasure and pain.

Tina snarled.  "Him…that bloody heretic!"

The confusion of everyone not knowing what's going on, the obnoxious announcement, the clatter, and then the extremely unprofessional appearance of the source of all this noise.

That was the very worst entrance I have ever seen in my multi-millennial existence! That's exactly how it happens: they're all bracing for cover and apparently Torturer is just suddenly there, no explanation, no theatrics, no description of him showing up. He's apparently just floating directly overhead of these idiots (which begs the question how the rest of his crew are staying in mid-air without a jump pack like he has).

So Cailean suddenly is unable to use his powers in the presence of the Lady, so he does not notice... something happening? They're apparently being shot at, but by what? Artillery? Orbital gunfire? Both instances, one would expect, would kill the lot of them. But instead they are all conveniently unharmed by whatever is hitting them.

Instead of shooting this abomination apart on the spot (ideally with vengeance bolts), Team Retard goes ahead and engages in banter with Torturer, who replies by accurately implying that Tina and Chaplain Moerchen are copulating.

Accurately.

All joking aside, Torturer then brings out his team to introduce them to the good guys, who casually stand around and make comments about how each of them is the mirror-opposite of someone on the opposing team.

So after falling dozens of meters out of the sky (apparently from above the cloud-coverage, even, so actually hundreds of kilometers), they all just land and start striking ridiculous poses when their names are called.

Anyone else getting that vibe?

After some more time spent not shooting and instead staring awkwardly (we know not how much time exactly, as this follows another text break) Cailean reveals himself as Yoda.

"You know I will never stray from the Emperor so waste not my time."

 Roughly half a page later, the story finally ends on the single most asinine line yet:

All they needed was one word, and they got it.

"Attack."

I'm not entirely sure whether to be admiring their incredible discipline, or hating them severely for being so ultimately stupid that they need a command to shoot a painfully obvious group of targets.

---~~~---

So this part is a whole huge mound of nothing, really. In the time it took WalkingMaelstrom to quite forcibly introduce each of his utterly forgettable cast, we could have had out of him what each of them do by the two parties actually fighting.

So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go prepare a little surprise for sweet Lelith. And get a new toe, while I'm out.

Toodles!

- V.