Aberration part 1

In which the Supreme Overlord is irritated by monotony...

Story: Aberration part 1
Author: SemperFiTRex/WalkingMaelstrom

That was a nice vacation. The core worlds of Ultramar are very nice this time of year. I don't think that quadriplegic cow Calgar will be letting anybody know any time soon that I made off with a few thousand citizens on his Chapter's homeworld.

Before we begin today I would like to take a moment to talk to you about why I hate any and all non-Roman plebeians who presume to attempt Latin.

Latin (well, pseudo-Latin) is a big part of 40K. The Imperium savagely abuses it to no end, because I have serious doubts anyone who has ever been on the Games Workshop development team actually knows Latin. But this is alright, because in some cases High Gothic is entertaining and awesome. It's mock-Latin, and it works for the intended purposes of parody and sustained seriousness.

Part of the reason we have yet to start referring to to WalkingMaelstrom as SemperFiTRex is that we can't decide what pun to use. There's so much wrong with his name: each part of it is a different Latin word that has been viciously misused with no clear intent to parody.

I mean, really. King Despot the Ever-Vigilant?

Actually, I don't want to say it's "an American thing" that people think it is permissible to abbreviate words in this language, but one certainly sees a lot of it stemming from American media... particularly this "semper fi" saying. What makes this worse is that "fi" is its own onomatopoeia in Latin, but the U.S. Marine Corps just went on heedlessly with this.

Romans were very deliberate even with their graffiti, because theirs was such a complicated language. They never did anything of this sort - which even I find difficult to believe. But to me, WalkingMaelstrom is just demonstrating his ignorance with his insistence that SemperFiTRex is what he honestly wants people to know him as hence-forth, rather than the more presumptuous "WalkingMaelstrom".

Speaking of ignorance...

A new character is introduced in the first three words of this part, so at this juncture I suggest everyone in the audience break out their shot glasses and a nice bottle of Johnny Walker.

Captain Arianne Gelmir sighed loudly while viewing from the observation deck above the Falx Malevolent sipping her cup of recaff.  She hated patrolling these lanes, wishing she was elsewhere with her Tempest Frigate in the thick of it.  She had been blessed before fighting the Tau in the Eastern Fringes with a notable track record, but that was all to fade in the dust bin.  Since the withdrawal and shift in focus to the Chaos pirate forces, Segmentum Command had her Imperial Navy squadron assigned to the Ordo Hereticus and to add insult to injury, paired with the rather haughty, and annoying to some regard, Captain Norrin Sebast of the Gloriam Aeternum.  The two had been somewhat friends decades before while in the Scholam and to this day she could not stand him, especially with his clearly shameless attempts to flirt with her.  Truly, she thought, the Emperor must have noted some hidden sin of hers.

 I'm beginning to develop legitimate concerns as to whether WalkingMaelstrom is a native-English speaker or not. Really, "while viewing"? While viewing what "from the observation deck above the Falx Malevolent"? And, above? This suggests her mysterious observation deck is disconnected from the ship.

And why is WalkingMaelstrom so unsure in his use of adjectives? Why can't this Norrin Sebast just be "haughty and annoying" (better - only one or the other, and "annoying" is best) as opposed to "rather haughty, and annoying to some regard"--

"Annoying to some regard"? To?

They "had been somewhat friends?" ADVERB FOLLOWED BY A NOUN?

WHAT?

I can just feel Captain Gelmir's blood boiling when this raging fop begins flirting with her in the next paragraph, because mine really was as well. In all seriousness though, this is shaping up to be just as bad as the Divination space battle was.

Because mark me, there's going to be a space battle. There was no other purpose to introducing these stupid characters if they aren't getting into a space battle.

One or two of them may die. Muses, it couldn't have been more obvious if "WE ARE EXPENDABLE SIDE-CHARACTERS" had been written onto Gelmir's tits.

And she happened to be wearing her open cleavage regulation-breaking uniform.

Now, it amuses me that WalkingMaelstrom is trying so hard that he's got a tech-priest on the bridge doing readings. Tech-priests don't run auspices; adepts and officers do that. Tech-priests don't even fix them either - they leave that to enginseers. Tech-priests on ships run the engines

"Captain, analysis is complete." The tech-priest hissed in between incoherent clicks.  "The craft is a light destroyer, Cobra class.  It's configurations seem slightly more customized than the standard variant."

It is configurations. Anyway, I suppose the Imperial Paladins are too poor to get a Gladius or a Hunter class... because you do realize the Adeptus Astartes have dedicated classes of ships built solely for themselves, yes?

I can see exactly how this came about. WalkingMaelstrom thinks he's too cool for Battlefleet Gothic, so he has no prior knowledge to Imperial ships. When he goes on to Warhammer Wiki and sees the lists of ships, he assumes that the ships available to the Imperial Navy are used by Space Marines...

... Or he could be trying to suggest something. I sincerely doubt that, but we'll see.

So, the Cobra-class starts coming at the loyalist ships, and it doesn't respond to them. The Navy holds off firing on it because it apparently belongs to the Imperial Paladins. Any idiot with several tanks of paint and enough determined slaves can paint a yellow cross onto the broadside of a ship. Once again WalkingMaelstrom guilelessly demonstrates that he has lived in a box without any way of knowing what human interaction sounds like, let alone military jargon:

"We should be all right.  It could be a friendly…but shift into blocking position regardless." She grabbed the caster after locking onto the vox channel of the craft.  "Unidentified Imperial Paladins craft!  This is Captain Arianne Gelmir of the Falx Malevolent of his Holiness's Imperial Navy!  You are venturing into restricted territory by order of the Ordo Hereticus!  State your purpose and contents!"  She was met with silence. "I say again, this is Captain Arianne Gelmir of the Falx Malevolent!  Identify yourself with your purpose and contents!  Failure to comply will be considered a threat and dealt with appropriately!"  Another period of silence followed.

"It's still coming at us, Arianne!" Norrin warned.  "I've got guns trained but we shouldn't fire until we get some confirmation!"

"Helmsman!  Turn fifteen degrees port, slow engine to thirty-five percent!  Gunners, prepare a warning shot on my mark."

"Ma'am!" One of the crewmembers down below cried out.  "The unidentified craft is transmitting itself via pict-cast requesting audience.  Engines are currently slowing down.  Shall we allow it to play through?"

"Transmit."

 So, after a completely unnecessary paragraph-break, we get to the transmission. WalkingMaelstrom seriously, seriously needs to stop using pronouns without utilizing actual names, because the "she" here could be anybody, and we have no idea who--

"Ave…Imperator…" The Space Marine said with a strangely pained look on his face, the screen buzzing from time to time garbling his voice.  "I am…Sergeant Niis of…the Imperial Paladins Chapter aboard the…Knight's Lance, a scouting vessel of the chapter."

 YES. BRILLIANT.

BECAUSE NOTHING ABOUT THIS GUY'S ARMOR SAYS VILE HERETIC, AND IT IS DEFINITELY AN OBVIOUS IMPERIAL PALADIN WEARING BLUE AND YELLOW AND IS NOT COVERED IN DEMONIC MARKINGS OF DEVOTION TO FOUL GODS.

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A COBRA-CLASS DESTROYER, NOT A RAGING PINK DILDO.

I refuse. I refuse to subject you to this, reader. I will summarize the rest of what happens in this scene:

Norrin Sebast dies in the most spectacularly retarded space battle yet, and Torturer gets away after being damaged because somehow, having her idiot of a co-worker die made her more determined to kill Torturer.

OF FUCKING COURSE the woman exists solely to avenge the man!

Alright.

Calm down.

Getting calm. Getting there.

And... okay. We're good.

Wow. Blowjobs do wonders to relieve stress.

So. once Torturer has escaped from the blob of nightmarish action writing... something... happens. There's a lot of incoherent shouting and no real action.

"The warp drives, my Lord!" Phoeb cried out.  "They…we…thought they would function.  The damage had been too…too much!  We have been dropped off from the Warp at random."

"Then get the engines online and get the coordinates back to New Badab!"

"We can't, Lord!  The power systems have shorted out!" Tarregus yelled again like he did before the jump.  "We're helpless right now!"

"Damnation!" Torturer cried out and only seconds afterward did the ship jostle and start to rapidly accelerate, forcing everyone to grab onto whatever they could as machinery flung itself about.  "What…is happening now?!?"

One of the servitors started to speak loudly through its fleshy vox piece. "Warning!  Warning!  Gravitational pull detected!  Engine systems offline!  Freefall is imminent in one minute!"

"What in the name of Slaanesh?!?" Torturer had forgotten to actually observe the fact they had pulled themselves dangerously close to some sort of planet.  The gravitational forces had nearly bound them to watch helplessly as the ship kept falling into the atmosphere with alarms blaring.  If the ship couldn't restore itself to power soon, they would all be part of a smoking crater on whatever forsaken rock this was.  He wouldn't allow it.  He wouldn't allow the fire of his ambitions to be snuffed out so quickly by the random hand of fate.  "No!  Get this ship online…at all costs!"

"I'm trying, Lord, I'm trying!" Tarregus struggled to reply.

"This isn't going to happen…not like this!  Not like this!"

This is like a really bad episode of first-generation Star Trek, written by Peter Chimaera.

It does, however, turn out that nobody was killed, to my horror. They all survived because of... of...

Oh no.

As the ship slowly descended, Stokkpile finally got a good look on just what could have destroyed the entire Kasino, his 'Ard Rok Kasino.  He couldn't quite reckon what he saw, something he hadn't seen in a very long time.

"Oi!  Boss Stokkpile…what'cha see?"

He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow.  "Zog me…spiky boyz."

 

---~~~---

I am positively dumbstruck. When I thought this series couldn't get any worse - it did.

WalkingMaelstrom is physically incapable of improving, I've concluded. Sure, his methods have gone somewhere, but his skill is still at a negative value. He's rehashing the same tropes he started out with: female character who is snappy becomes solemn and vows vengeance because the guy she didn't realize she loves is slain. When he introduces something new to the story, however, it's even worse.

Almost all of what we have left to cover at this present time involves ORKS, and when you have orks written by an idiot, you get the most horrific imitation-Cockney ever.

I have never seen orks written satisfactorily as point-of-view characters, because it's flat-out impossible the way they're designed. If you acknowledge that they somehow all know Low Gothic, then you are very likely to alliterate their voices as an atrocious accent.

And seriously, we're stuck with these orks for tens of thousands of words. They serve no purpose. I doubt they'll ever have anything to do with anybody ever again in this series. This really is filler, and it's just awful.

I need to see if I can't trick Lelith into reviewing the rest of this blighted ork diversion. That would bring me no end of joy.

I'm going to go eat a tub of ice cream now. Enjoy life, Kabalites.

- V.