Egression part 2

In which a lot of stupid things happen in a very short amount of time.


Story: Egression part 2
Author: WalkingMaelstrom/SemperFiTRex

So, what can be said about the last part? Well, against expectations, the plot -- or what passes as plot in this jumbled mess -- finally started to move forward. At a snails pace, but it is moving forward! It also managed to end on a fucking cliffhanger, which is something WalkingMaelstrom seems to use instead of proper suspense. The weirdest thing is that I don't think these cliffhangers are done intentionally, but instead are something caused by DevianTART's retarded word limit on Literature submissions... though on reflection it is most likely a good thing. 

So, the question for Egression pt. 2 is this: will the plot continue to develop? 

Let's find out, Lords and Ladies!

Lord Vect appears to have neglected this, but we left Tina, Xin and newcomer Andres as they stepped out of a plot-convenience/loading screen style elevator. They are immediately savaged by guards and Judias seems to finally catch on to events, announcing their escape over the vox. This causes Andres to say: 

"Shit again!" 

I think it needs to be stated again how fucking silly WalkingMaelstrom makes the curses in his stories. It's like a small child discovering cussing for the first time and not quite grasping that they follow their own logic when you put the words together to spin oaths and insults. 

The ship is however shaking apart around them, so the three have to get to the transport deck, for obvious reasons, to escape. 

  "The docks are up ahead!  We've only got precious minutes left!" 

Please remember the mention of "precious minutes" for later, Lords and Ladies.  

The ship buckled again under another minor explosion, steam pipes bursting and crewmen along with guards being flung around like rag dolls.  The trio grabbed a hold of some nearby rails, the lights bursting above and being replaced by the emergency ones on the deck floor, a deep red tint covering them. 

 As they struggle through this, the encounter more of the Galaxy's worst guards. Seriously, look at the lack of coordination of these fellas: 

"There they are!  After them!" Guards from behind screamed, some giving chase while others fired warning shots with their laspistols to at the most wound them.  One hissed itself right past the face of the Lady, the red robe tearing itself right in front of her. 

Some chasing the three escapees while the others stand and shoot at them? What fantastic storm troopers! 

...

Wait! I figured it out! They're the Empire's storm troopers! The other Empire! You know, the storm troopers who can't shoot straight and wear the immensely protective and well-camouflaged suits of white plastic?

That the armour doesn't actually protect them is how we know the Empire is EVIL! 

The three, for want of better words right now, protagonists are then cut off by another guard and Xin proceeds to leap off a wall and air-kick no jutsu the guard in the face, prompting Inquisitor Tina to wonder where this side comes from. Isn't Xin supposed to be a storm trooper lieutenant? 

They continue running down what I assume to be the docking bay to get to their escape-ship, with laser shots pinging against the bulkheads around them and smacking into unlucky crew. Because aiming doesn't enter into it, you see. Only luck dictates whether you're hit or not and Tina, Xin and Andres operate on obscene amounts of it. The best part is that Lady Tina sourly reflects that her vision is impaired by the hood of the robes she is wearing. Then why don't you drop the hood then, you dumb bitch? You are obviously discovered! 

Then this happens: 

"Stop them!  Do not let them get to the docks!" The chilling voice of Judias snuck up behind them.  How she could reach them in a matter of minutes was terrifying to the Lady.  Her custom laspistol tore a fist-sized hole right near a control panel, scant inches from Xin's head.  Eriu Judias was not only intimidating in manner, but also physicality, as the trio could hear her footsteps approaching ever closer. 

How the fuck does a voice "sneak"? And considering the bucking ship, the wailing of lasgun shots and the crashing from every crate and every piece of bric-a-brac not tied down in the hall, how the fuck can Tina hear her footsteps? The writing also makes it seem as if Lady Tina is shooting at Judias, and not the other way around, which I think was WalkingMaelstrom's intent. 

Also, how the fuck does Tina know it is a "custom laspistol"? Just call it a laspistol and please shove a towel in your mind's mouth so we don't have to listen to your idiotic suppositions any longer! 

So, they make it to the hangar bay doors and my least favorite person turns up. 

"Lady!" The voice cried through the din like the shrill of a bird.  "My Lady!  Come on!  Keep moving!  The ship is prepping!"

"Hallock!" Xin cried out. 

Ah, Trooper Hallock. From now on, you are renamed Pillock. Because just when I thought you couldn't be more annoying, you turn out to have a shrill fucking voice. 

Las-rounds continued to ping around the metal, ricocheting off and one smacking the wall next to Hallock.  She yelped in surprise sliding back behind the doors. 

Hey, it is good to see that Pillock is still shit at her job, the job she's trained at for the better part of her adult life. At least she is in good company, as Tenepht's men are equally bad at aiming. You'd think with this much lasfire poured down a hallway, people would start dying, but no: they only get winged. See my former comment about Star Wars storm trooper aiming. Yes, I am making the joke twice, fuck you! 

And speaking of references: 

"Shoot to wound, troopers!" 

Say hello to our first, to my knowledge, Star Trek reference, courtesy of Lt. Xin.  

Catfight 40,000 also continues as Judias catches up with Lady Tina: 

Meanwhile, Judias had death in her eyes, hoping to strangle Lady Tina to within an inch of her life before bringing her back to Tenepht to string up personally.  "You defiant, decrepit bitch!  You just don't know when to give up, do you?!?  I am going to take pleasure in beating you senseless!"

Tina grunted trying to grip the deck and pull herself free, but found herself sliding backwards.  She kicked wildly with one landing a direct hit to Judias, but that only enraged the Inquisitor as she doubled her efforts to grab her.  Tina felt herself dragged back another few feet, desperate to find something to add resistance. 

I'll... er... be in my bunk. There's something about girl-on-girl action with strangulation involved that is just... so... 

"I've changed my mind, you bloody slag.  I'm gonna carve you into bits on that operating table I mentioned…after I slaughter each one of your friends starting with that annoying tech-priest of yours!" Judias brandished her boot knife and readied it to dig into Tina's calf, but she missed when Tina swung her leg violently and kicked her off.  That only slowed her for a few seconds.  Getting back on her knees, Judias hissed a few more curses slashing at Tina's leg.  Tina, with back turned, had reached for a repair wrench when she felt a hot, stinging pain run along the side of her calf.  Judias's blade had torn right through the fabric and gave her a sizable cut, but only superficial.  The pain fueled her jump for the wrench and as Judias readied her knife to dig into the Lady this time, Tina twisted her whole body around and with one violent swing, struck her adversary square across the jaw and dropping right down to the floor out cold.

She struggled to catch her breath.  "Bloody…bitch…get down…and stay down." 

Okay, changed my mind. I'm staying here. Here I was hoping for something nice and faux-lesbian, and instead I get a lousily edited and jumbled knife-fight. For shame, WalkingMaelstrom, to waste such an opportunity. But then again, we're wasting precious minutes, so I should not be complaining, I guess. 

 They get through the doors to the docking bay, seal them, and Pillock worries over Tina's hurt leg. Then we get this line as Andres tries to communicate with someone: 

The man tapped him vox bead as he and the others sprinted and avoided the guards intent on stopping them. 

 I've already used the "dafuqamireading.jpg" twice now, so we'll have to settle for this: 

Also, I have avoided this polka-dot elephant in the room long enough, because just before that piece of incomprehensibility, there is this: 

In the distance, almost to the other end of the docks, lay the bridge to the Falchion that Andres spoke of. 

A Falchion class escort. It has been referenced again and again, even in the last part. To find out what that is exactly, I will have to show you to this little snippet from the Fantasy Flight Games RPG, Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus.

Something you'd find inconspicuously parked at the end of a bridge.

Please note that it is (as per the Rogue Trader game) 2.2 kilometers long (about 1.3 miles) and usually has a crew of 27,000 people on board. It is a frigate employed by the Imperial Navy. A Thunderhawk gunship, the most common orbital transport in the Imperium, is roughly 30 meters long and crewed by four people.
By comparison, a Boeing B52 is roughly 48 meters long. Source? Wiki-fucking-pedia, bitches. 

Gives you an idea about Thunderhawks' size, doesn't it?

This is not nitpicking, people. WalkingMaelstrom has mistaken a large cruiser for an orbital lander. This gets hilarious later on, I promise. As if having a more than two mile long ship nestled in the belly of another ship wasn't stupid enough.

Their escape on board the cruiser is of course fouled by EVEN MORE of Tenepht's guards arriving. You would think this was an attempt to create some sense of danger, but it does not seeing as Tenepht's guards so far have proven themselves to be immensely incompetent ass-holes. And we get introduced to more storm troopers serving Lady Tina. They all have stupid names like Kaap, Rima, Uhl etc. Though not Hale. Hale is a fine name. 

The ensuing fire-fight is dull and serves no other purpose than padding, and shows that Lady Tina is still so confused by her sudden escape she doesn't even think to ask for a laspistol, but is happy to sit behind a crate  and watch as the others do the job for her, nevermind her wounded calf. 

We get another wonderful slice of misogyny here though, as Andres pulls out a grenade launcher and Xin sees it too late: 

Xin's eyes went wild.  "A grenade launcher?!?"  Andres took aim.  "You can't…no!"

It was too late.  Andres had without hesitation launched two rounds straight at the hellgun guards, Xin watching in horror as they'd be vaporized.  But then, the rounds exploded into a hazy white mist and the echoes of coughing and crying carried down to them.  After a few seconds he fired another round that slowed down the third group of guards.  He smiled back at Xin.  "Gas rounds…meant for Arbites for riot control.  What, ya think I was carrying high explosive for something as daring as this and where we are?  Get ourselves sucked into a vacuum?"

She watched the guards writhe and collapse from the noxious fumes, snickering all the while at Andres.  It was rare for Xin to laugh let alone crack a smile but the sergeant did not disappoint, "That was crafty, sergeant, real crafty!"

That's another female character being one-upped by a man. If you are playing the drinking game Vect concocted, I am starting to feel sorry for your liver by now. Starting to -- ha! It is about to get worse.

Much worse. 

They do manage to get into another featureless corridor (the "bridge tunnel" to the Falchion as it apparently wasn't stored in Tenepht's barge's belly, but that is not made very clear!) and Xin decides to stay behind for whatever reason, but Andres hauls her with her. Once more one-upping her in common sense. Finish your drinks. Yes, the ones you just poured! 

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the unnamed inquisitorial barge of whatever class, Tenepht is being angry and smashes more things in his rage at people escaping him. Dude, it'd help if your guards weren't so unbelievably incompetent and actually could hit the broad side of a barn! I know Vect and I have joked about how atrociously and obviously evil Tenepht is, but at this point he reaches the truly comical levels as he begins to act and demand stuff like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. 

Another thing that reaches truly comical levels is WalkingMaelstrom's punctuation, which at this point is supplanting his trademark ALL CAPS shouting. Just look at this: 

"Judias!  What is your position and status!  Now!"

"Blasted old bitch got away!"

"What?!?"

"They're being helped, Lord!  Someone else is helping them!  We've picked up personnel that don't register with this ship!  Reports of Mechanicus from the ship come in with markings of them collaborating!"  

"Who?  Throne damn it, who?!?"

"Unknown.  They blew the door panels to the docking bays and we're trying to find another route to get to them!"

He snarled with the authority to put the fear of the Emperor in everyone's heart.  "Is there anything on this bloody ship that will go right for me?!?  I don't care what you have to do, Eriu, but you will get me those shitting filth prisoners and have those who helped them find their heads on pikes!  Do you understand?!?"  

That's a LOT of exclamation and question marks in there, and very little understandable jargon.  

And, "shitting filth prisoners"... just, wow.

Meanwhile in the other part of Zaney-town: 

"This way, my Lady!" Hallock pointed out to the entryway to the destroyer, a lightly-sized vessel meant for escort of a small cluster of ships. 

The problem is that as WalkingMaelstrom has not made it clear whether this ship is outside the barge or not (it was hinted at being in the "belly of the barge", ie in its cargo-hold in Egression pt. 1), this scene is either stupendously insane or makes sense. 

Either way, the following lines definitely don't make sense: 

Whether or not it was his didn't matter at this moment.  What mattered was if they could get the craft running and in enough time to evade the guns of the barge.

Even if this ship is small, I doubt it to be completely shut down. Let's ignore the fact that WalkingMaelstrom thinks an Imperial escort ship is a small-time affair (we already know he's not even mistaking the Falchion for some sort of small personnel shuttle since he called it a "destroyer"), and look at it from logic's view: 

The Falchion class whatsamathingie is tethered to the barge of unspecified class. The barge cannot stop dead in space, because Isaac Newton says so (see Vect's rant in Egression pt. 1). Unless the Falchion is clamped to the outside of the barge (and no mention is made of clamps anywhere, so you do not have to go look), it will have to travel at matching speed to the barge to keep up, and the tethering lines not being torn out. Things may not have weight in space, but they still have mass! 

It is NOW that Lady Tina grows a pair and decides to stay behind and make sure everybody gets on board. She gets Pillock's lasrifle handed to her, a weapon "unfamiliar" to her. 

How does she fare? 

  She forced herself to air some comfort knowing they were still all right.  Her arms raised with lasrifle pointed at the other end, still waiting for Andres, Xin, and the rest.  The footsteps she could hear separate from the alarms got louder and louder with each second.  Her index finger tensed at the trigger of her lasrifle, tension further added by the shouts and reports of other weapons.  Sweat beaded from her brow and trickled down, breathing heavier which shook her aim.  She had never handled this rifle in her life and now in all these times here she is volunteering as a quasi-rear guard. Her finger desperately wanted to squeeze the trigger.  Then, just like that, a few of her troopers followed by Andres and Xin flew themselves through the doors.  Had she been just a little more jumpy, a little less disciplined, and a whole lot younger, one of them might have been on the receiving end of a shot. 

Not even when she plays a hero's role is she remotely competent it would seem. What sort of inquisitor has never handled a lasgun, the most dirt-common of all weapons in the length and breadth of the increasingly technologically stagnant Imperium of Man? An incompetent fucking cunt, that's who! 

And the thing is: she was perfectly fine to jump into a scrap with a Space Marine back in Symphony of Chaos. Even taking her wounds into account, it does not explain her sudden lack of nerves and how she almost shoots her own people when they come through the doors. 

Fuck you with a spiky stick, WalkingMaelstrom! 

Tina stays behind some more and finally gets to shoot at Judias and company, making them duck long enough to close the suddenly malfunctioning hatch. It was fine to let them in a minute ago. 

The lot finally get on board the Falchion, which with 70 people on board is cramped. Despite all lack of understanding of dimensions and spacial relations it is now beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is indeed a Falchion class escort. 

Now that they are all aboard the ship though, you'd think they would be in a hurry to leave? Nope. The next page is pretty much nothing but more padding of the story, despite there being a rush to get to it. As a matter of fact, it takes them so much time to detach from the main barge, that it makes you wonder why Judias and her troops did not just find an alternate way in? 

The situation was not one for tearful reflections, as Andres noted when he barged in.  "I'd love to keep this going, Lady Inquisitor, but we have to prepare for launch.  Ukerji is working the harness releases while the crew starts the engines up.  Get the troopers to some sort of seating for evacuation!"

"I've got it, Andres," Xin redirected his request to bear her with the responsibility, "and you work with that Navigator you said you had."

The Lady had herself another surprise moment as Xin walked by yelling orders to any trooper able to move and work. "Navigator?!?"

Yes, Tina... You need a Navigator to make a warp jump, along with a warp capable ship with a functioning Gellar field. As a Lady Inquisitor I assumed you knew this?

The robed figure standing in the middle revealed himself.  He was a rather spindly albeit young man, aged somewhere in his forties surrounded by the ship's technologies just getting to work in conjunction.  He seemed of a positive demeanor, a far cry to other Inquisitorial vessels with Navigators bound and chained like animals after the soul binding rituals.  She recalled her own with the fair treatment she gave them despite the massive discomfort her presence would cause and was already causing. 

 There are two obvious problems with this scene:

1. Navigators are stable mutants (as stable as a people prone to horrific degenerative mutation get) within the human genepool. Their abilities of seeing though the warp are not in requirement of the "soul binding ritual" as they were employed long before the Imperium existed. The soul binding is reserved for astropaths. 
2. Navigators are not slaves. Their Houses are immensely powerful entities, easily comparable to the High Lords of Terra and certain parts of the Inquisition as well. Everybody depends on them doing their job, so you better treat them nice or they will send you careening into the Eye of Terror. Speaking of that place's denizens, even Chaos Marines treat their Navigators well, because without them they would essentially be stranded. Nobody fucks with the Navigator Houses and their scions, because if the Navigators are upset then the entire Imperium ceases to function.

I was about to add that it makes no sense for such a small vessel (going by WalkingMaelstrom's logic here) to even be warp-capable when this happens: 

His [not sure if it is Andres or the Navigator - Lelith's note] explanation was interrupted by an intense buckling.  The barge's reactor continued to struggle and with it the light destroyer felt the aftershock.  People and equipment were tossed everywhere but miraculously the ship managed to not suffer any damage to cripple it. 

Light destroyer. Welp. We are dealing with a two mile long ship! A two mile long ship that is cramped with 70 people on board!

They are having trouble to detach from Tenepht's barge and Andres, not Xin or Tina, orders people with technical know-how to help the cogboys. Good thing he brought some technicians and pilots with him. 

Meanwhile, Lady Tina sat in her harness at the behest of her counterparts, again playing the role of observer and again uncomfortable with the whole notion.  The lack of the chaplain made it all the worse.  The stolid stance of the Astartes, no matter how dire the situation, always brought a calm to her nerves.  Now she relied on complete strangers. 

I see Lady Tina continues her time-honored tradition of being a useless twat when her intellect, or supposed intellect would actually be of use. And look, more codependency on her behalf! 

The ship finally manages to break away from the barge and starts off. And then Andres tells them to fire rail guns at the ventral batteries of Tenepht's barge. Excuse me, last time I checked, rail guns existed on Tau ships. Not Imperial vessels. And certainly not a light cruiser. 

Despite that, the non-Navy personnel manage to get the ship's guns online too and blast away at Tenepht's bigger ship, which still has not got its power back. That must have been one hell of a sabotaging job, I say! 

There is also mention made about being too close to the other ship for a warp jump and the Navigator needing to prepare, which I can buy, but not this: 

"We can't, Lady.  The Navigator still needs time and we're too close to the barge.  If we do it now we'll suck debris in and we'll be off course…or worse." 

Suck in debris? What? 

And up until now, not a single mention of the Gellar field being up and running has been made. Guys... I think you've missed a tiny, but fucking important detail! 

What happens when you venture into the warp without a Gellar field active? 

That in a nutshell.

My dear Commorrites, considering how much I hate the main characters I am feeling a bit ambivalent. I don't want them to be massive idiots, but right now, it'd be so satisfying to see them have arms shoved down their throats and bits of their innards escape out their mouths. Though considering who is writing this tripe, it isn't likely. 

After some more blasting at stuff, they finally have a vector and Navigator Dessal tells them as much: 

The Navigator clasped his hands and closed his eyes to focus, again the rather unfitting calm of him making him alone from the rest of the crew.  Around him shone a very faint blue aura, the fabled "third eye" of the Navigator active in its peering through the Warp, peering for the safest possible path for these men and women through his veil. 

In WalkingMaelstrom's world, shaped by reading too much shitty ninja-manga, all psychic manifestations take the form of glowing auras, and that these change color depending on whether people are good or bad. The Navigator is good, so his aura is blue. Nevermind that Navigators actually have a third eye in their foreheads. 

A third eye which will kill you if you look into it.

Some more false tension is created as they make for the warp, with missiles, not torpedoes, being fired upon the escaping escort ship. There is still no mention made of a Gellar field, only void shields prior to firing upon the barge. 

Perhaps the lack of properly active Gellar field is what causes this: 

The room suddenly turned quiet, mouths grimaced in struggle as the pull of the Warp had taken hold of the small vessel.  Everything had felt weightless, breathless, and ice cold in that moment, the ship shaking violently all around from the sudden suction into the empyrean.  The weights of ceramite armor had felt like they were pushed into the ribcage of everyone aboard.  Hallock screamed from the pain, Xin's hand gripping hers in an effort to calm her down, but she too felt the same agony.  Uhl could feel the blood trickling from his nose and falling all over his legs, hands ready to break the steel he was holding before he went unconscious.  Andres fell to a knee, fighting with every iota of strength to get back up.  He knew making such an impromptu jump even with some preparation was going to be painful.  He quickly thanked the Emperor that Tenepht did not destroy them, but worried the Warp was going to take his place in eliminating them prematurely. 

 If this is what happens every time humans make a warp jump, I can understand why they feel so apprehensive about it. But here's the thing. It isn't. WalkingMaelstrom is trying and failing to create tension in this scene. A sudden jump to warp is utterly dependent on the Navigator and the warp engines being online, not whether a course is properly plotted. That is very hard to do in the warp. Why do you think ships get lost? It's because whatever trail they were following, disappeared; whatever course they had plotted, vanished. 

Adding to the fun is that this jump is a paltry 10 light years. Jumping a hundred times as far in one go is not unheard of in Imperial history. Especially considering that the galaxy is 100,000 light years across. 10 light years is fucking nothing. 

But that is not the best part. 

The best part is that even the Lady Inquisitor, the pariah is affected by this jump! 

She had undergone many warp jumps, but this in particular was horrifying to her and the others.  Mayhap it was the desperation to do so or the situation altogether that made it that way, this tiny craft enduring the tempestuous Warp.  

The tiny, mile and a half long ship is apparently shaking apart at the seams. And her abilities can shield them all, while not making the ship rattle less? Where is the logic in this? Please tell me, because it has been missing for over 400 pages now! 

What this entire warp jump sequence does is just hammer home what total disregard WalkingMaelstrom has for the source material, and how lazy he is. Of all the things in 40k, one of the most documented is warp travel, having changed very little since the mid-90s in terms of lore. I don't know if he is just lazy or stupid. Most likely a combination of both. 

Speaking of lazy, another word (or rather phrase) that has to be added to the growing list of such that WalkingMaelstrom uses repeatedly is "minutes that felt like hours". There was one in Divination and one in Rumination. Oh, and the Navigator, unlike most of his kin, performs his duties standing up and with his Eye revealed for all to see. Not secluded from the rest of the crew, sitting reclined in a chair. What. The. Fuck? 

The group of dolts make their escape, none worse for wear, no-one actually dead, and we end the whole part on Tenepht acting like most cartoon villains: he blames Judias for what is obviously his own laxity in apprehending the escapees. 

"Listen to me, and listen well, Inquisitor Eriu Judias.  This escape of that blasted bitch is your failure and everyone else's here.  This throws everything I had worked for into jeopardy."  He then threw her onto the cold deck, the coughing and hacking filling the room.  "Into jeopardy!  Everything!"

She fought the pain to get a word out as the boot steps approached. "M-m-mm-my Lord…I…"

He knelt down with hand placed firmly on her pulled hair.  "You…will find them.  You will gather your finest men and women, and you will find them.  You will find out where they are going, what they are doing, who aided them, everything!  You will exact my punishment unto them with your hands!  Do you understand?"

"Y-yes…yes my Lord."

He flung her across the floor a good few meters where she collided with a column, coughing up blood as she lay there.  "Good."  He turned to the rest of the crew.  "I expect the same of you.  Find the traitors and bring them to me.  I have already dealt with enough failure.  The next time I have to, reprimand will be permanent!" 

I wish I could say the same about our author and Vect's and mine dittos, Tenepht. I really do. 

___________________________________________________

 For better or worse, this part was at least focused on one collection of, as Lord Vect so aptly put it while we ate with Duke Tathrax earlier this week, tedious fools.

It was sadly also focused amounts of stupid, meaning I am left with a nagging headache which only a long night in the Arena can fix. Yes, what little plot there is got advanced a bit, but part of me feels cheated.

On what? Why, Lady Tina's escape, of course! She honestly did jack fuck to get out, utterly relying on the actions of others to do the job for her. This could have been a prime place for WalkingMaelstrom to show that she has intellect and connections, capable of weaving a web of intrigue so dense that Tenepht wouldn't know she was out before her escape craft hit warp.

To really mire us in it, we end the story with a plot-point in regards to Tenepht's motives for his actions being plunked on us so hard it nearly made an audible sound.

But worst of all is still that fucking ship, the Falchion.

WHERE IS ITS GELLAR FIELD, WALKINGMAELSTROM? WHERE?

//L

Egression part 1

In which the Supreme Overlord is very serious...

Story: Egression part 1
Author: WalkingMaelstrom

 WalkingMaelstrom is, I realize, something like a fan-literature version of Uwe Boll.

House of the Dead was hi-ho-lariously amazing simply because of how bad it was. Most of his early movies are like that: good for a couple cheap kicks but nothing else. However, as he's progressed he's actually started to figure out how film-making is done, and has started injecting this new knowledge into his work in pieces.

Fucking nazis...

So now Herr Boll has gone from amazingly bad to just mediocre. There's nothing special about him.

This is the case with WalkingMaelstrom following Divination. I don't know who sprayed the water bottle in his face, but we're starting to see a decrease in the things that made us love to make fun of this series, and instead he's begun to try and emulate greater writers than him by injecting various writing techniques into his work experimentally.

There's quickly becoming less and less worth pointing out. It's getting boring. I fear that soon we'll be entering a phase where his writing style becomes so "eh, we've complained about this a hundred times before" that all we'll be able to talk about is how bad the plot is, or how some slut is once again only there to comment on the men.

But while we're on the topic of cinema, you know a Warhammer 40,000 fan project that is no-doubt going to blow Rivals Til Death out of the water?

Yes, I have high hopes for The Lord Inquisitor and I'm not entirely unjustified in them, I think. I mean-- come, now! Aaron Dembski-Bowden is involved! I can't name a single thing he's ever published that wasn't good!

I can't even find a compromising photo of him.

 All that WalkingMaelstrom can boast is having some severely disturbed Russian with unusual artistic ability to back him up. That and a disgustingly large pocketbook for commissions.

We start out this part with an all-too-familiar lack of names:

  More than a week had passed since the last interrogation with Judias which left her a little worse for wear.  Her wounds had healed and so far it was a miracle of the Emperor that neither she nor her retinue had cracked for any wrongdoing, nor had any succumbed permanently.  She knew they were of no fault even if she wrought herself with guilt day and night aboard Tenepht's ship.

I do not think "wrought" means what you think it means...

Aside from that, after a paragraph's breadth (that's a sophisticated word used correctly, WalkingMaelstrom) he finally mentions that this is the Lady Inquisitor who we are getting a report on.

 See what I mean though when I say WalkingMaelsothstrom is starting to inject better writing?

Eximus.

High Gothic.  It was loosely translated into "We are leaving." 

 Knock off "was" and choose Wiktionary's Latin tertiary figurative definition of "we escape" rather than the first definition of "we are leaving", and we get a fairly solid technique.

Unfortunately this is the next sentence:

The word gave her a sliver of hope only the thought of the Chaplain being alive could outdo.

 So much for improvement. WalkingMaelstrom has a consistent problem with word-choice, and how he assembles these words. Look at how that sentence alone is structured: a thought of something is given to Lady Tina, which in comparison to this thought of this other thing what were we talking about? When a sentence begins to drag on like this the reader loses focus, and often is forced to double back to figure out what the writer is talking about. It's completely alright if a sentence is linear (as they should be), but if thought A connects to B, but the two intersected by C - well, C had better be fucking short or there'll be issues.

Okay, if I take too long to discourse the flaws in WalkingMaelstrom's writing style, I run the risk of, before finishing, either Duke Tathrax or Her Excellence Hesperax waking up and finding themselves in my bed - or both of them at the same time, and speaking frankly, I don't need another replacement part.

You know which part I'm talking about.


Now, anyway, after summarizing events in the most contrived manner possible, WalkingMaelstrom reveals that Inquisitor Tina is apparently receiving messages from tech-priests who randomly visit the prison cells, apparently frequently.

And this happens:

Chattering in tech-speak, the guards paid no heed to them, but the middle glanced his greenish eyes over to the Inquisitor for but a second and in blinding speed spoke to her in Low Gothic.

"Look for the fire to bring the darkness, the small fowl borne in the belly shall provide flight without threat, waiting."

Astounding. Forget that this greenish-eyed priest's speech is so quickly-uttered that it will blind you, but how a person comprehends something spoken with such rapidity is beyond me. Look at how lengthy that sentence is, for pity's sake!

A fugitive, though?  Would she really be willing to become one?  Would she rather accept her fate as one fallen from grace?  No.  As long as the Chaplain lived, so would she, even if the Ordo Malleus damned her for it. 

 Just stop expounding and escape already, you dumb slut!

So Trooper Pillock starts shouting deliriously about how the prisoners must place their faith in the Imperial Paladins to survive.

And what are humanity's defenders doing at the moment?

Worse than that, actually. But I'll be dealing with that two weeks from now.

But Tina sees Pillock's useless faith for what it is: insanity manifesting in its early stages. Honestly, when did sitting and happily awaiting ever work out for anybody besides Princess Peach?

This would be the point where if this were as predictable as we'd like to think, a random Space Marine in the colors of the Imperial Paladins would jump out of the ceiling and bite his way through Lady Tina's cell.

Instead, after a few hours Tina ends up being taken to be interrogated yet again. WalkingMaelstrom spares us another instance of Catfight 40K by seguing instead into --

"Mmmmmm…my Lord?  Where are you going?  Are you coming back?" The pleasured groan from the cultist carried through the miasma of incense and chemical smoke wafting through the air within the private room.  She and another female laid themselves upon the purple silken sheets, naked as babes.  From the looks on their faces and how spent the bodies were, pleasures were bestowed upon them a thousand fold, and then some.

There stood Torturer donning the scraps of his armor he felt necessary, meandering around his quarters observing the various trophies as the daemons inside the ceramite hissed and snarled.

... Can we go back to the Lady being tortured, please? That's more interesting than watching Torturer just put on power armor as if it were something you casually throw off before love-making.

I really must harp on the writing style again, because WalkingMaelstrom seems to think this be ye olde tymes.

Many a time his brute strength was used in an effort to defile her in ways she had no intention of, but her lord was always quick to act, quick to reprimand. 

 Is it really that hard to type this out instead,

Razorwire often tried to rape Cath, only to be stopped by Torturer's intervention.

 Rather than forget you're in the middle of a sentence so that you can assure us Torturer doesn't let his little snowflake get raped by the idiot with half a mask? The value of Maelstrom's words is decreasing dramatically due to his crumbling word-economy. At this rate I'll be able to compare it to the Zimbabwe-dollar.

"No.  I would prefer to stay out of his conversational prowess, or lack thereof, at this present moment.  Besides, he is still busy having some fun with the Eldar slaves we just took, or with the time passing what remains of them."

No, hold that thought - I already can.

Next we... ugh. Next we have a situation identical to the opening of Vessel of His Wrath where, in an attempt to mystify a character, WalkingMaelstrom subjects us to a half-page of text with no names given, despite mention of Malexis and sudden roundhouse kicks being thrown by third parties.

Three pages later it is revealed to be Ignis meditating in true weeaboo form, a traitor space marine who somehow bears the rank of "Sergeant" in an organization which otherwise seems to lack such ranks entirely. I figured out two pages in that it was Ignis because it mentions the Black Legion, and I recalled Ignis was a former Black Legionary, according to the author's comment on this lovely yet hilariously stupid portrait. I'm sure you'd probably also know he was a Black Legionary if you'd read through the fucking glossary for this series which WalkingMaelstrom wrote in an effort to shed some light on the mess that is his writing.

The Sick/Siege/Stealth Six gather then on the ship's bridge. Somewhere in this discombobulated pair of sentences I think WalkingMaelstrom is trying to insist that Torturer is some sort of space-hippie now:

Apart from Eleaxus and his increasingly apparent sense of nobility, the Sixes were seen as mentors and actual champions.  Torturer mused that this was how it ought to be, not overbearing superhumans casting their lesser ilk as cattle but instead being an example for them and how to live for the Dark Prince.

 Really, the whole "we're your equals" thing is complete nonsense when you reflect that Space Marines can survive hard vacuum, direct exposure to solar radiation, temperature extremes, most forms of ingested poison... you know, overbearing superhuman things.

Characters who we have never heard of beforehand start talking as if they've been here the whole time, like they're our old buddies we meet up with every Saturday to play shuffleboard.

"Wouldn't be wise to annoy Ignis, heh, would it?  Havoc?"  Vorren with surprising audacity called out to Razorwire.  

      The Alpha Legionnaire craned his scarred neck to the man, teeth grit in a manner that would have him thrashed if it was a one-on-one.

 This Vorren fellow is a fat elephant sitting at the dinner table, and nobody else seems to be surprised by his sudden appearance. No explanation is given as to who he is, so we have to go to the accursed glossary in order to learn that he is a raging homo.

Torturer reveals that he gathered everyone together onto the bridge, disrupting Captain Tarragus's efforts to actually run his critically undermanned crew of 90-ish men*, for no better reason than to inform them they are approaching the Maelstrom, where they will suck Huron Blackheart's warped, prosthetic cock.

Someone (Phoeb, Tarragus, Torturer - I don't know, it's a "he", like there's not 40 men in the room) states this, then:

"As you can already see, brothers, the Maelstrom lies ahead of us.  We are so close…yet so far." His clawed fingers swam through the holo-pict and pointed directly to a small cluster of flashing red circles in the projected pathway of his ship.  "Alas, one does not simply fly into the Maelstrom..."

It's amusing because "Walk into the Maelstrom" is a pun on his name.

And immediately upon reading that my face met my keyboard. Repeatedly. This is what it looked like:

Anyway, I think this is what is meant when it is said Zekkel speaks in tongues, because this statement is indecipherable:

"You see, dear Rakkes, it wouldn't be our nature to never think of plans, yes?  Is it not our nature to be creative and intuitive when approaching the lapdogs?  Did you not remember Grexx?  This realm, nay, this galaxy, is built of happenstance, is it not?  Yes.  We have our plans built upon plans and just the delicious irony of doing so."

 Frankly, after this the dialogue ceases to make any sense at all, but from what I can make out in the planning for plans of happenstance (which makes it not happenstance at all really) they apparently plan to shoot Ignis out of a torpedo tube to "represent" the crew if the Inquisition comes knocking while they try to break into the Maelstrom.

Wait, why would they need to worry about Imperial ships at all? Combat isn't possible in the miasma of the warp. All they need to really do is just stay in the Empyrean until they pass any Imperial checkpoints. That's precisely how Huron sends out raids.

In spite of this they've somehow stolen the vox-codes which the Imperial Paladins use. I must say, this is a blatant shoehorning of the plot-point from Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, wherein a traitor amongst the Heroes of Typhon gave up the Blood Ravens' vox codes to the Black Legion on the orders of Chapter Master Azariah Kyras.

So what I can assume from this is that the Imperial Paladins are so bad at encryption that a third-rate crew of idiots can steal their identifiers and their vox-codes-

Oh right gay fencing. You've that to look forward to here soon, reader.

So, after Torturer receives yet more ego-stroking for his incredibly bad plan, more sexist comments are made, and more absolutely alien dialogue is uttered, we return to Lady Tina meeting with Inquisitor Tenepht.

Morran Tenepht X was finally waiting for her.

Oh, he's finally waiting for her. Like she's been waiting for this moment before she is permitted to do anything else.

No! We are never -- never -- going to let it go!

At this juncture I must comment it has been so long since I last saw a numerical denominator tacked onto any person's name in anything 40K-related that up until recently I thought "X" was supposed to be some odd form of Inquisitorial censorship on this fool's true last name. I am left wondering why there is a tenth-generation Inquisitor Morran from this Tenepht family. It does not work that way! Nobles receive ordinals to identify that they are the eleventh or ninth or twenty-seventh individual of the name "Harold" in that dynasty to hold his specific office. The position of Lord Inquisitor is neither hereditary nor is it particularly a stable one, as "Lord Inquisitor" is more a rank the Inquisition gives you for seniority and hard work.

No justification that WalkingMaelstrom and Torture-Device can offer will make any sense of this. It nags at me every time I see this guy and watch him seethe and curse and grit his teeth when things don't go his way. He's an obvious parody, and judging from the fact this obnoxious creature is a parodic villain of Imperial origin, I'd say he's yet another instance of Torture-Device vomiting his twisted victim-complex of "the Imperium is bad for no reason and Chaos is for the cool guys" everywhere.

I was summarizing something, wasn't I?

Of note, Tenepht greets Tina with what is nearly word-for-word the same line Judias used in Rumination:

"Ah, Lady Almathea Tina…or whatever you go by nowadays.  I haven't the time to play guessing games anymore with your monikers, so mayhap we should cut to the chase."

I truly pity this MaKo85 person. If her idiot-friends won't even break their habit of using the phrase "mayhap" incessantly in scenes incorporating her own intellectual property, they're not very good friends at all.

Suddenly, gravity apparently fails and Tina is yelled at by some mysterious savior. The remaining two pages of this feature the revelation that Lady Tina's savior is named Andres, and then all interest is lost as they release of the entirety of Tina's entourage.

I guess I should add that it's actually something happening, but after having to dig through an earlier 14 pages of incomprehensible writing to get to it, this isn't really impressive.

---~~~---

* Torturer's vessel the Engine of Obscenity is, according to this, an Infidel-class raider.

This is what an Infidel-class actually is.

Must get awfully lonely in the empty halls of that flying pink dildo that doesn't look a thing like an Infidel-class.

Not all of that 24,000 crew is expected to do something at once, but a lot of them are there as back-up in the event the 1/3 of the crew that is necessary is spontaneously spaced. With a crew of 91, Torturer's macrocannons are hard-pressed to get their house-sized ammunition loaded in time to fire. If a hull breach occurs, there's no chance of pulling others from their current duties to fix it. When someone needs to perform maintenance on the shuttle that just docked, I guess Captain Tarragus has to roll up his sleeves and help run fuel-lines.

Brace yourselves for a rant here. Today's topic is on themes in fiction and how not to fuck them up.

Warhammer 40,000's unique appeal is the absurd scale of everything in it. The galaxy is a huge place and to manage it the Imperial bureaucracy is impossible to navigate. Ships are huge things because the long-term nature of warp-travel necessitates enormous systems which necessitate enormous crews to maintain those systems which necessitate enormous stores of food...

Ships in Warhammer are enormous, and not all of that 1.5 km is wasted on vaulted ceilings and elaborate decoration. These vessels are towns and cities going through space! Crews live their entire lives on these ships, often in communities, working jobs, building their own economies and having their own internal conflicts, living their own daily rituals despite everything in the galaxy around them. When one of these ships blows up in Battlefleet Gothic, that's tens of thousands of lives that just go down the drain. Destroying an Imperial Battlefleet is the equivalent of exterminatus - and people just cheer when a shattered vessel's drives explode!

Having crews of this size is integral to the point being driven home in 40K: an individual human life is meaningless in the far future.

What I'm knocking at with this is that Torture-Device (and WalkingMaelstrom by extension) does not understand Warhammer 40,000. He writes Torturer like some sort of extremely evil Commander Shepard, and the Engine of Obscenity is the SSV Normandy.

Spoilers: Necrons are the Reapers.

 40K is a gothic space opera. The Imperium is so steeped in ritual and mysticism that the only way they know how to completely protect a ship against any warp-intrusion is to inscribe 12-pt. psychic wards across the entire hull of a vessel.

Torture-Device forgets this and writes it like a generic hard-science fiction: he just casually mentions technology which we've never heard of anywhere else nor seen precedent for in the Imperium, such as "holonets" and turret-mounted railguns. The Chaos gods aren't really doing anything despite every piece of evidence indicating they are very much active players on the board. After reading about the Gheistos Cataclysm, I have every inclination to think that Khorne would have a dozen champions chasing this idiot down for betraying him in favor of Slaanesh.

WalkingMaelstrom also neglects what Warhammer 40,000 is, and instead writes it like some... generic... some generic...

Yes, something like that! Idiots swinging swords and shouting at one-another and sensing power-levels. It pretends to be 40K, but the disguise is juvenile in its misguidedness, for SemperFiTRex does not understand the universe he is writing in.

More often than not, apart from challenges with basic English, this is what defines "bad fanfiction" on various levels. Characters don't fit the mold of hopelessness that encompasses the setting by not hating/fearing eldar to death, or being Chaos-worshipers and not inarguably evil.

The worst case of this I ever did lay eyes upon was the "Kitsune Marines" or whatever they might have been called. The basic premise was a space marine chapter with a female chapter master who was part-daemon, part-Eldrad's daughter, and she had cat-ears and the chapter's homeworld played host to countless different xenos-species trying to get along, including "reformed" dark eldar and peaceful tyranids.

An attempt to track this atrocity down failed disastrously as I suspect it has been removed. I couldn't tell at the time whether the person who made it was a vicious troll or serious, but they cared enough to write a story in response to a tide of complaints, wherein an Inquisitor arrived and declared all of it non-heretical.

I imagine if I start digging through the 40K section on Fanfiction.net I'll find plenty that is far, far worse than the Kitsune Marines, but that's an unpleasant thought.

Right now Lelith and I focus on the overtly pretentious fanfictions, those that are irredeemably bad yet are convinced they are good. Every 7-year-old with access to a keyboard writes those sorts of things, but that's something kids do in emulation of good writers. You don't slap the dog for humping your leg, but when people who are clearly adults write diarrhea like this and hold it out on a silver platter, that's truly arrogant.

So, that is what we mean to focus on as of this moment. I'm not sure how many more idiots we'll find who commission dozens of pieces of high-quality artwork for their sins against literature, but if we do find them we'll be breaking them down.

 'Till 'Til next time, Kabalites!

- V.