Warhammer: After 18 years, finally an end

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VanSandman: Feb 16, 2011; SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER

Khizan posted:

What is the CCCP bit you're talking about? It's been a while and I'm drawing a blank.

A pre-unification toy rocket, estimated to be from M2. CCCP is what the USSR called itself.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 00:21

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# ? May 10, 2024 06:32

MasterSlowPoke: Oct 9, 2005; Our courage will pull us through

Russians were right to go with lead paint.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 00:33

Klaus88: Jan 23, 2011; Violence has its own economy, therefore be thoughtful and precise in your investment

That is not the first time there has been a "modern" reference in 40k fiction.

The Emperors Gift has the main character refer to a collection of North American "Kings" and the line "all men are created equal'

That is an insult to the slave holding aristocracy that formed the United States drat it! :freep:

# ? Aug 4, 2015 01:35

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Didn't the foreward to Unremembered Empire have a reference to a man named "Shakespire?"

# ? Aug 4, 2015 01:56

SRM: Jul 10, 2009; ~*FeElIn' AweS0mE*~

There's a lot of not-terribly-subtle references to modern culture and so on. I like them so long as they're few and far between; it makes sense that somewhere there'd be relics of life 30-40,000 years in the past, even if they're lead Soviet rocket toys.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 02:24

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

And let's not forget that Jon Grammaticus (or one of the other stupid Perpetuals) assassinated MLK Jr.

Perturabo is also a huge Leonardo da Vinci fan, and Ahriman has a translated copy of the Voynich Manuscript on his bookshelf.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 03:09

Improbable Lobster: Jan 6, 2012; What is the Matrix 🌐? We just don't know 😎.; Buglord

Cythereal posted:

And let's not forget that Jon Grammaticus (or one of the other stupid Perpetuals) assassinated MLK Jr.

Perturabo is also a huge Leonardo da Vinci fan, and Ahriman has a translated copy of the Voynich Manuscript on his bookshelf.

I thought the Illuminati cabal of aliens did that

Or was that just IRL

# ? Aug 4, 2015 03:18

SavTargaryen: Sep 11, 2011

Arcsquad12 posted:

Didn't the foreward to Unremembered Empire have a reference to a man named "Shakespire?"

Shakespire comes up a couple times in Unremembered Empire, yeah. I think some of the other Rogal Dorn stuff, too. Dude's a huge nerd.

Edit: Also in the audiobook he pronounces it weird, and you could pretty much hear the reader's soul dying when he had to make the noises of Dorn's answering machine beeping.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 04:45

kanonvandekempen: Mar 14, 2009

Cythereal posted:

And let's not forget that Jon Grammaticus (or one of the other stupid Perpetuals) assassinated MLK Jr.

Hahaha where is that from? And why?

# ? Aug 4, 2015 09:34

Sandweed: Sep 7, 2006; All your friends are me.

Don't forget that Genghis Khan got to become a Demon Prince because he was to bad rear end to die.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 10:28

Dodoman: Feb 26, 2009; A moment of laxity
A lifetime of regret; Lipstick Apathy

Sandweed posted:

Don't forget that Genghis Khan got to become a Demon Prince because he was to bad rear end to die.

Wait, what?

# ? Aug 4, 2015 12:22

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

kanonvandekempen posted:

Hahaha where is that from? And why?

It's from one of the Horus Heresy books, Grammaticus or one of his pals thinks over all the stuff he's done for the Cabal, including killing "a nice young man in Memphis."

# ? Aug 4, 2015 12:29

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Dodoman posted:

Wait, what?

this is really old fluff, pretty sure it's no longer valid

# ? Aug 4, 2015 12:32

Sulecrist: Apr 5, 2007; Better tear off this bar association logo.

Cythereal posted:

It's from one of the Horus Heresy books, Grammaticus or one of his pals thinks over all the stuff he's done for the Cabal, including killing "a nice young man in Memphis."

"The Good Man." The assassin in Unremembered Empire (not Grammaticus, the guy with two shuriken pistols and a Bad Attitude).

# ? Aug 4, 2015 12:45

Angry Lobster: May 16, 2011; Served with honor
and some clarified butter.

V. Illych L. posted:

this is really old fluff, pretty sure it's no longer valid

Doombreed. I think it's never explicitly mentioned as Gengis, just that he was a bloodthirsty warlord in the middle ages who conquered cities every day and killed millions, so yeah, Genghis is a pretty safe bet.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 13:12

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

Angry Lobster posted:

Doombreed. I think it's never explicitly mentioned as Gengis, just that he was a bloodthirsty warlord in the middle ages who conquered cities every day and killed millions, so yeah, Genghis is a pretty safe bet.

it might be atilla, genghis sounds more like the emperor in disguise

# ? Aug 4, 2015 13:14

Wax Dynasty: Jan 1, 2013; This postseason, I've really enjoyed bringing back the three-inning save.; Hell Gem

Just dropping in to say Fire Caste is a good book worth your time. The plot is a self-aware take on Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now in that the basic plot is a commissar travels into the deep jungle in search of renegade soldiers. The author, Peter Fehervari, actually knows how to write, which is a miracle by first-time Black Library author standards. His dialogue is good, he fills in the story with interesting sub-plots and characters, but where he shines is in describing the miasmatic, decrepit jungle setting. Get it, especially if you like IG novels.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 20:00

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

SavTargaryen posted:

Shakespire comes up a couple times in Unremembered Empire, yeah. I think some of the other Rogal Dorn stuff, too. Dude's a huge nerd.

Edit: Also in the audiobook he pronounces it weird, and you could pretty much hear the reader's soul dying when he had to make the noises of Dorn's answering machine beeping.

There was another reference to Shakespeare, in Prospero Burns, where someone proudly informed the main character (during a flashback, before his journey to Fenris) that his team had successfully reconstructed the fourth of Shakespeare's plays, and that the collection was now complete. I like that kind of reference, one that uses something real to illustrate the differences between our world and the 40K setting. Just dropping names of famous things isn't as interesting, although having a translated Voynich Manuscript is quite clever.

Speaking of weird references in Prospero Burns. There was a flashback scene where the protagonist found a tomb with religious statues in it, and then some Thousand Sons marines came in and made everyone leave and presumably investigated the site themselves. Is that scene supposed to tie into anything? Because it seemed like something that would come up again, but it never did that I could determine.

# ? Aug 4, 2015 20:03

Sulecrist: Apr 5, 2007; Better tear off this bar association logo.

Kylaer posted:

There was another reference to Shakespeare, in Prospero Burns, where someone proudly informed the main character (during a flashback, before his journey to Fenris) that his team had successfully reconstructed the fourth of Shakespeare's plays, and that the collection was now complete. I like that kind of reference, one that uses something real to illustrate the differences between our world and the 40K setting. Just dropping names of famous things isn't as interesting, although having a translated Voynich Manuscript is quite clever.

Speaking of weird references in Prospero Burns. There was a flashback scene where the protagonist found a tomb with religious statues in it, and then some Thousand Sons marines came in and made everyone leave and presumably investigated the site themselves. Is that scene supposed to tie into anything? Because it seemed like something that would come up again, but it never did that I could determine.

I took that to be another clue that the Thousand Sons had been loving around with forbidden lore for a long time. I think it's also where the Thousand Sons might have first conceived of him as a potential sleeper agent. Alternatively, he had been planted long before and his encounter with the Marine was either his rediscovery or a hint that even line legionaires knew some dark espionage poo poo was going on.

Sulecrist fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Aug 4, 2015

# ? Aug 4, 2015 21:00

Fatty: Sep 13, 2004; Not really fat

Don't the Thousand Sons he meets make a comment on Kasper Hawsers name as well? Implying they know about a minor part of 19th century history.

# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:12

Mechafunkzilla: Sep 11, 2006; If you want a vision of the future...

I still laugh thinking about Dan Abnett's spectacularly ill-conceived idea to have one of his characters be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassin.

# ? Aug 5, 2015 15:19

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

Alright, after way, way too long, I've finally got back to writing Doc Eldar. Today has been very productive, and I'm not done yet, but I've reached a good break point and thought I could post what I've already finished. For those of you who are interested, here it is:

quote:

Let me tell you a little story about the most terrifying boss I've ever had. You've had some scary superiors in your life, I expect, but trust me, this one was unlike any you've ever encountered - unless you've worked for an alien, and I strongly doubt that you have. Out of all the people I've met, or even heard of, there's only one I know who can claim to have shared an equivalent experience. Not working for the same boss, we each had our own, and our paths only crossed once. I would not have wanted to switch places with him, but I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to take my job either - which consisted of working for the Monsignor Jeremias' chief medical officer, the xeno whose name I could never pronounce. I called him Doc Eldar.

I remember that we had an unusually long layover at one of our regular ports of call, a station in orbit over an unremarkable lightly-populated world. It was fairly small, as stations went, so our ship wasn't able to dock; instead, we settled into the same orbit and ferried cargo back and forth with lifter shuttles. The station was more a fueling post than a major trading site itself, and much of our commerce was actually performed directly with other ships who were there for the same reason, rather than the station itself. A bit like a a swap meet between inhabitants of the same living-quarters block, all sorts of cargoes being exchanged. We stayed for more than two weeks because the Monsignor had heard news that a vessel carrying some "high-end technical equipment" was inbound, and he wanted his pick of the offerings.

(The vessel, when it eventually arrived, turned out to be carrying agricultural harvesting machines, made in numbers far in excess of demand because of a clerical error at the forge world where they originated. Jeremias cheerfully filled one of the holds with them, despite having no buyer. He ended up selling them four months later, when we arrived at an agri-world that had just experienced a devastating solar EMP event on the verge of harvest season. Needless to say, his profits were vast; the Monsignor had an uncanny talent for reaping money in all his endeavors)

For the first eleven days of our stay, there was not a single trauma on the ship that required our intervention. No longshoremen crushing their hands or feet moving cargo, no low-deck menials having life-threatening encounters with heavy machinery, not even any kitchen staff burning or cutting themselves badly enough to need medical attention. The hospital's routine surgeries went on as they normally did - there were still hernias to fix and gall bladders to remove, tumors to excise and worn-out joints to replace with augmetics - but no traumas.

The xeno, I suspect, was rather unhappy with this. As far as I could tell, he lived to operate - when we didn't have patients, he would check equipment, or stand at the trauma suite's data kiosk, monitoring the streams of information from the other operating rooms, or reading through old records. I was happy enough, though; being Doc Eldar's assistant, I got to experience all the screams his surgeries produced, but unlike him I took no enjoyment from them.

But all things end, and when our break reached its conclusion, it did so in a memorable fashion. Not with an alert of patients incoming, or a communication from the ship's emergency response coordinator that we were needed at the scene of an accident, but with the chime of an incoming message from the bridge itself.

Doc Eldar was standing in front of the pict-caster in a heartbeat, before the chime had even faded. He tapped the key to establish the connection and waited as the screen resolved from blankness into a murky image of one of the Monsignor's adjutants.

"Doctor, are you occupied at the moment?" the officer began, without preamble - making small talk with an alien was not high on anyone's list of enjoyable activities.

"No, I am not. Is there a task for me?" Doc Eldar was eager. His voice revealed very little emotion, but the cues were there, and I had worked with him long enough to pick them up.

"The station has requested all available assistance with an emergency. Two lifters collided in their main landing dock and the casualties are too numerous for them to handle."

The xeno's ears gave a fractional twitch, in synchrony with his eyebrows. "Relay to them that I will be on the way immediately in my personal craft. Follow me with a conventional shuttle, equipped per standing doctrine, at earliest opportunity. Anything else?"

"No. Bridge out," the adjutant said, and the screen returned to darkness.

Doc Eldar's eyes were bright when he turned to me. "We have been lacking meaningful work recently. I am pleased that there are people we will be able to help. Follow me."

With the scene box slung over my shoulder, I followed. We made our way towards the fore of the ship, mostly along the conveyance belts that ran down the longitudinal thoroughfares. Groups of crew scattered when they saw the xeno approach, so our path was never hindered; the alien could have outdistanced me easily, but he kept his pace at one that I could match, since I did not know our precise destination.

In the fore quarter of the ship, we took a transverse hallway that led to the port side. We were in the vicinity of a bank of smaller landing bays, the ones housing shuttles for officers, wealthy passengers, or especially valuable trade goods. We passed deck crew, Mechanicus priests, and servitors, some carrying cargo, others unburdened; we paid none of them any attention, and they returned the favor.

At the entry ramp to one of the bays, I saw a pair of servitors of a different brand entirely. These were as large as the cargo models, but instead of manipulator claws and stabilizer gyros, they were equipped with heavy-caliber weapons, and all of their organic tissue was hidden behind armor plating. Optic lenses and active scanners protruded from their face-plates, and as we approached, they focused on us, weapon mounts pivoting to track our movements.

The xeno didn't break stride. He raised one hand, fingers splayed to show his palm, and recited a lengthy string of numbers. The servitors hunched, turning their guns away, and he tapped another code into the locking plate at the bay's door. "The Monsignor's doing, not mine," he said, twitching his head towards the servitors as the door began to slide open. "My craft can defend itself."

I'm no stranger to space vessels. I was born planetside, but it was in a city built around a landing port, and almost all of my adult life has been spent in the void. I've seen shuttles, lifters, and light craft of all descriptions; I've stared through observation blisters at dozens of space stations, countless system patrol cutters, hundreds of civilian starfaring vessels, and even a detachment of the subsector battlefleet - I took picts of that, including one I was really proud of, a shot of the battlecruiser King Daerglaion bracketed by its escort frigates, basking in the light of a red sun.

You probably won't be surprised when I tell you that the ship in that bay was unlike any I'd ever seen before.

The alien vessel, at first, seemed to be painted black. It was only after I'd had a chance to stare at it a bit more that I realized it was actually near-black, in truth being shades of blue, green, and red, each so close to pure darkness that they could fool the eye into wondering if the hint of color was just your imagination. It was smaller than a standard shuttlecraft, and lacked the robust, orthogonal lines of the vessels I was used to - the edges of its curving, forward-swept wings narrowed to razor thinness, and its hull was rounded like the body of a bird or a fish. The control cockpit was perched on a spar that projected from the top leading edge of the hull, and the spar itself was tipped with blade-like fins. Ovoid shapes hung from the wings, and others were built into the hull and the front spar, and from these stretched long, thin projections that were obviously weapon barrels. Even sitting still, with its landing claws deployed, the ship looked deadly, like something out of a combat pilot's dream...or nightmare.

Without an obvious signal being given, a ramp extended, from the vessel's fore section, just underneath the spar that held the cockpit. Doc Eldar strode up and vanished into the gloom within; I paused, reflexively, but only for a moment. If there was something inside that would have done me harm, the xeno would have warned me, I reasoned.

In truth, I couldn't see anything inside. The interior of the craft seemed to soak up the light, despite the hatch open right behind me; the darkness was like layers of cloth enveloping me.

"Put the scene box down and look behind you to your right," came the xeno's voice from above me. "There is a ladder to the cockpit." I obeyed; the ladder was barely visible, and as soon as I laid hand on it the hatch slid closed, making the gloom absolute. Thankfully, as I climbed, things grew brighter, from the light entering through the canopy.

There were two seats in the cockpit, one beside the other, with Doc Eldar sitting to the right. I maneuvered my way into the left seat - it was designed for someone taller than me, and was none too comfortable, and on top of that it did not seem to have any kind of restraints. I could see the xeno wasn't wearing any either; he had fitted his hands into a pair of complex mechanisms, consisting of dozens of spindly, many-jointed arms, each of which led to a ring that was positioned at a specific point of one of his finger. His hands flicked, the armatures not impeding his motion at all, and I realized belatedly that they were a control system. A similar pair of control mechanisms was curled against the station in front of me, but I made no motion towards them, instead resting my hands against my knees.

Patterns of light danced across the canopy ahead of us. "Pre-flight complete," the xeno intoned. He cocked his left thumb and I heard the hiss of a vox channel opening. "Coordinator, I will launch at your clearance."

The blast shield ahead of us rumbled to life, splitting along the diagonal to show the field of stars beyond, shimmering faintly through the atmosphere retaining screen.

"You are cleared to launch when the door is open," crackled the voice of the traffic coordinator.

I could see that the door was barely half-open. Doc Eldar stared at it, fully intent. "That is far enough," he said, no inflection in his voice.

His hands began to dance in their control-armatures.

The ship's engines shrieked to life - not the howl of conventional aero-turbines, but something else, something that set my teeth on edge. We launched like a bullet from a gun, accelerating towards the doors that were still far, far from fully open. I didn't even have time to gasp as the xeno tilted the ship and slipped through the gap, the meter-thick metal of the blast doors seemingly close enough to reach out and touch.

As soon as we were free of the ship, the xeno turned precisely, cutting an arc that would lead us directly to the station. I have to admit, the view from that alien vessel's cockpit was tremendous, much better than from the portholes of a standard shuttle, and I took in the sight of the rapidly-nearing space station with an air of joy.

Until I saw the bright, hard specks of light blossoming from the turrets on its flanks.

"Are they...firing on us?" I asked.

"Yes. They do not have our vector yet, evasion can be delayed." Doc Eldar cocked his thumb to open a vox channel. "Station control, cease fire. This vessel is inbound on a relief mission at the request of your own command staff." He paused, waiting for a reply, but none came. He glanced at me. "I shall have to speak to the Monsignor regarding our traffic controller on our return."

"We're turning back, then?" My knuckles were white from where I was gripping my own knees. The path of the ship hadn't twitched yet, but I could see three gun turrets still firing on us. Accurate or not, eventually they would put enough flak shells in our direction that something would get close.

"Certainly not. We have a mission. We proceed. Brace yourself, I must start evading fire."

He was so calm as he said it that I almost didn't brace in time. But when he sent them ship into evasion, despite the excellence of its localized grav-generator, I lurched in my seat, and if I had been unprepared I likely would have hit my head on the canopy. That ship could fly. The xeno's fingers danced, the view outside the canopy spun madly, the wail of the engines hurt my ears, and if I hadn't been hardened by all my previous void experiences, no doubt I'd have lost my breakfast all over the cockpit.

The station was growing closer, in the brief instances when I could focus clearly enough to make out details. It wasn't just flak shells flying at us now - glowing lines of las energy were criss-crossing space all around us, some bright enough to leave after-images on my retinas.

I squeaked something along the lines of "You can't dodge las-bolts!" - those may not have been the exact words, it was a stressful time, as you might imagine.

"All I need to do is not be in the line of the turret when it fires," the xeno replied, still glacier-calm. "Their gunners are unskilled. We will not be overly delayed." He was quiet for a moment, while he sent the ship into a corkscrew, with at least six batteries seeking to destroy us. "Almost there. Soon the shape of the station itself will start reducing the number of turrets that can fire on us."

At that point, I just closed my eyes and prayed, as we spun towards our goal.

Some moments later, when I was starting to feel like I couldn't handle it any more and was about to start gibbering in fear, the xeno spoke again. "Air barrier in three seconds."

I opened my eyes, and saw the cavernous landing dock, sized to handle a dozen full-size cargo lifters at once. There was no physical blast door, just the atmosphere screen, so I could see the interior quite clearly - I could see the smoke in the air, and the wreckage of the two lifters, crumpled together near the middle of the floor. There was a fair amount of empty space in the bay, luckily, with only about half the available space being occupied, so finding a place for the xeno to land his craft shouldn't prove a problem.

"The Monsignor will want that traffic controller ejected from an airlock for neglecting his duties," Doc Eldar remarked. "I will have to intervene on his behalf."

"You don't want him punished?" I was starting to breathe easier, now that the ship was through the barrier and sinking towards a landing site.

The xeno blinked. "Of course not. I have not had an opportunity to fly like that since signing Jeremias' contract."

And as for what the second part is going to involve, I had mentioned this story earlier, described like this:

Kylaer posted:

And the third one is full-on whacky hijinks, in which the narrator meets a kindred spirit as it is revealed that Jeremias is not the only shipmaster insane enough to hire a xeno physician

Kylaer fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Aug 5, 2015

# ? Aug 5, 2015 20:39

MariusLecter: Sep 5, 2009; NI MUERTE NI MIEDO

Mechafunkzilla posted:

I still laugh thinking about Dan Abnett's spectacularly ill-conceived idea to have one of his characters be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassin.

That is the greatest idea in WH40K literature and I will hear no ill on Abnett for conceiving it.

# ? Aug 5, 2015 23:22

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Kylaer posted:

Alright, after way, way too long, I've finally got back to writing Doc Eldar. Today has been very productive, and I'm not done yet, but I've reached a good break point and thought I could post what I've already finished. For those of you who are interested, here it is:

Welcome back.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 02:23

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

Mechafunkzilla posted:

I still laugh thinking about Dan Abnett's spectacularly ill-conceived idea to have one of his characters be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassin.

Dunno, the X-Files did it

# ? Aug 6, 2015 03:10

VanSandman: Feb 16, 2011; SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER

Yaaaay I love Doc Eldar!

# ? Aug 6, 2015 03:43

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

And here's the other half! Glad you're enjoying, let me know your thoughts!

quote:

There was a faint clicking noise transmitted through the hull, as the ship made a perfect four-point touchdown. Doc Eldar stripped the control rig off his hands and was down the ladder in a matter of heartbeats; I followed, still feeling a bit wobbly from adrenaline. The air outside the ship was harsh with smoke, but just as heavy was the smell of fire-retardant foam, and I hadn't seen any flames on our approach, so I figured the scene itself should be safe.

Doc Eldar was standing at the base of the ramp, head twitching as he tracked the screams of the injured - and likely estimated the severity of their wounds based on the sound, I wouldn't have been surprised. "This station must have a medical crew as inept as their gunnery teams," he remarked. "This incident does not seem catastrophic. I estimate ninety to one hundred and twenty injured. We will tally and triage the injuries before starting work, unless we encounter criticals." He set off at a brisk walk, and I followed, as we wound between loading gantries and powered-down lifters on our way to the epicenter of the wreck. We passed several longshoremen who had taken minor injuries and were standing around with dazed expressions; the xeno declared them low-priority and we continued on our way without pausing.

The air crackled - something coming through the atmosphere barrier, something big and moving fast. I turned. The craft flying into the dock was about as aerodynamic as a brick, its skin of heavy plates in places splashed haphazardly with paint, but mostly raw metal. Like Doc Eldar's ship, the station personnel had obviously been firing on it. Unlike Doc Eldar, this pilot hadn't dodged. Fresh shrapnel scars gleamed bright amid the rust, and part of the ship's landing gear had been blasted clean away. It touched down and skidded five or six meters, with a hideous screech of metal on metal, coming to rest perhaps thirty meters from where we stood.

The xeno watched as a hatch on the side of the ship ratcheted open. He looked pensive. "If that ship is what I believe it to be," he said, "this situation is about to get interesting."

Now, I'm sure you've heard stories about Orks. Given your past, maybe you could tell a few of your own, eh? At that point in my life, I'd heard stories too, and I even believed a few of them. I'd been told by some older hands among the crew that the Monsignor had gotten into a fight with a band of them once, before my time on the ship, over some ancient wreckage found in deep space; he'd won that fight, and recovered some bits of archaeotech that the Mechanicus paid handsomely for. The things I knew about Orks that I thought were safe to consider facts were the following: they were big, they were green, and they were dangerous.

All true, for the record. But I was about to learn more.

The Ork came bounding down to the deck with a jangle of metal on metal. He - I'm not truly sure if Orks have gender, to be honest, but I considered him male based on his voice - was definitely big. Not out of the human range of height, and in fact a few centimeters shorter than Doc Eldar, but so heavily built to put even the most habitual dyel-swigging longshoreman to shame. Not simply his upper arms, but his forearms were bigger around than my thighs, and his neck was almost indistinguishable from the piles of muscle surrounding his shoulders. And he was definitely green, his hairless skin ranging from a lighter green on his hands and scalp to a much darker shade on his neck and shoulder girdle. He wore heavy boots, pants, and a thick leather front-and-back apron; this was festooned with gear loops, and all manner of tools of dubious medical efficiency were hooked through them, clanking together with every movement he made.

One of the first things I didn't know about Orks that I was about to learn was how loud they could be. He turned back towards his ship and bellowed, in heavily accented but definitely understandable Low Gothic: "Come on, grot! Get the cart out here!"

Doc Eldar was walking towards him. I let him lead by several paces. I strongly suspected that the two of them were not instantly going to become working partners, and I didn't want to be too close when they decided to settle their differences.

The Ork met Doc Eldar's gaze and nodded at his approach. "You here to help with the relief effort? Good. I'll be in charge."

"No. You will not. I am -" and Doc Eldar recited his name again, in a blur of syllables "- chief medical officer of the ship Ebenezer Majd, by lawful contract with the Monsignor Jeremias."

"Oh yeah?" The Ork curled his lips, revealing even more teeth than the pair of tusks that had already been on display. "Well, I'm Dok Gitskragga, chief medical officer of the ship Svaktigan, by lawful contract with the Contessa von Leostradt."

"You carry tools better suited for butchering animal carcasses for the kitchens than working on human beings," Doc Eldar said, gesturing at the saws, hammers, and pincers on the Ork's apron. "You are not equipped for delicate work, and thus I must conclude that you do not plan on performing delicate work. It is inappropriate for you to be in charge here if that is your attitude."

"Doesn't look like you came equipped for much at all," Gitskragga countered. "Don't see any replacement limbs. Don't see any transfusion squigs." He patted an ovoid, yellow-green lump tucked through a loop on his apron, and I jumped when it blinked, drawing attention to the fact that the speckles on its top were in fact eyes. The Ork gave a couple of deep sniffs. "Don't even smell much in the way of drugs. Some pressors. No antibiotics. Paralytics, yeah..." and his brow wrinkled "...but no anesthetics? What're you thinking?"

"Anesthetics are not required, and hemodynamically unstable patients are less likely to experience adverse events if they are avoided." Doc Eldar was placid before the Ork's growing anger.

"Anesthetics are standard of care, you git, even in traumas! That's supported in every medical journal published in the sector!" Gitskragga was roaring now. "If you don't even believe that, you aren't practicing medicine, you're practicing torture! You shouldn't even be here! I have standards of professional behavior to uphold!" He shook one enormous fist in Doc Eldar's face.

Doc Eldar, still impassive, reached past the Ork's arm and plucked one of the tools out of his apron, whip-quick. "The standards of care also mandate cleaning of instruments between uses." He was holding what appeared to be a meat cleaver, heavily rusted. "I smell the blood of four different individuals on this." He tapped the edge with a fingertip. "Not only that, it is blunt. This would not even be deemed suitable for kitchen use without sharpening and polishing. What standards are you following if your surgical objectives can be accomplished using tools like this?"

Behind Gitskragga, another figure had emerged from the Ork ship. This was a human, dressed in scrubs, although he was built more like a bouncer or longshoreman than what you'd expect of a medical orderly. He was hauling a cart laden down with wrapped bundles that I assumed were surgical equipment. He stared at the ongoing argument between the two aliens for several seconds, then looked over at me.

Our eyes met, and all the sympathy in the galaxy flowed between us. Here was someone who could understand what I had been going through since the xeno's arrival, and clearly, he had the same realization. It meant a lot, in that moment, and I missed the next few exchanges between our respective bosses.

I had to return focus to the situation at hand as Doc Eldar turned away from Gitskragga and motioned to me. "Dok Gitskragga has agreed to divide the labor. We will work our way around the crash site heading counter-clockwise, while they do the same heading clockwise. That creature will mutilate any crew he gets his hands on, so we must work with utmost haste, to preserve as many as we can." He didn't lower his voice, and I presume Gitskragga's hearing was keen enough that he caught every word, given that we were less than ten meters away.

"Alright, here we go," Gitskragga shouted at his orderly, "every human we don't fix gets cut on by that git while they're still awake. Now!" Yes, he'd clearly heard everything.

The next span of time went by in a blur, as we treated patient after patient with no time in between. Response teams from the station's own medical facility were gingerly approaching to collect patients and haul them off for treatment, but none stayed on scene to perform any work - the presence of two aliens, both terrifying, had them spending as little time at the accident site as possible. The flight crew from both lifters has been killed in the crash, so all the victims who were able to be helped were ground personnel, and those were mostly shrapnel injuries, with a few burns among those who had been immediately adjacent to the falling vessels.

Even from the far side of the crashed lifters, I could hear the Ork bellowing orders. Doc Eldar never raised his voice, but his location was equally obvious to a listener: you could track his position by where the screaming for help turned to just screaming. We were making good progress; I don't remember many specifics about the injuries we treated, but there were a lot of lacerations and punctures repaired, a few minor amputations reattached, some burn eschar released to prevent compartment syndrome...the usual spectrum of injuries for a scene like that. We were definitely outpacing Gitskragga, that I was confident of, and in time our teams came within sight of each other, now working our way closer as the last patients were treated.

"Where are your fingers? Are you aware of where you lost them?" the xeno asked, face mere centimeters away from that of a longshoreman we'd found sitting against a gantry, clutching to his chest his left hand, on which everything except the thumb ended in ragged stumps.

The man turned his quivering head to one side and stared fixedly at a plate of metal that must have come flying off one of the lifters.

"Under that," the xeno surmised. "Unlikely that they can be salvaged, if they are fully crushed, but we will try."

I got a grip on one side of the plate while the xeno took station on the other. Doc Eldar, I had learned, was not preternaturally strong; sure, he was stronger than a human of the same build would be, but I doubted he could lift as much raw weight as the man whose fingers we were now hunting could have. Prior to his injury, at least. We lifted the plate, though, and shifted it far enough to reveal the fingers. Three of them, the xeno judged, were beyond salvage, but he informed the man that he believed his index finger could be saved, and so he went to work, with me feeding him lengths of suture.

A short distance away, Gitskragga was kneeling beside another man, who'd been hit by a similar plate, but had taken it against his left knee and lower leg. Blood was pooled on the deck around him from open fractures, but apparently he'd managed to rig himself a tourniquet before passing out. The Ork prodded the wound a couple of times, shrugged, and took the small creature from his apron and pressed it against the man's neck. "That's ruined," he growled, "it'll have to come off." He unslung the cleaver from his apron and hefted it. "Grot! I need a limb here!" He brought the cleaver down with an ugly, heavy thump, then rocked it back and forth a couple of times to separate the last of the tissue.

"We're out of legs," his orderly said, in a tone that said this was not the first time he'd faced this situation. "All we have left are arms."

"Can't be helped," Gitskragga said, undeterred. "Give it here, that torturer's gotten ahead of us."

Doc Eldar hadn't looked over, instead keeping his attention fixated on his work. Any kind of amputation reattachment was tricky business, and something as mobile as a finger especially so - the bone, tendons, nerves, and blood vessels all had to be connected perfectly before the skin could be closed. But I couldn't help but watch. Attaching things wasn't nearly so tricky a process for the Ork, it seemed - he had taken a crude augmetic arm and was now drilling its base screws into the stump of his patient's leg. He placed three screws, none of which matched the others, and then slathered the stump with some kind of thick, wax-like sealant. "Job's a good 'un," he muttered as he rose to his feet.

I realized there was only one patient left with what appeared to be significant injuries, sprawled prone on the deck between us and the Ork with several pieces of shrapnel in him. Doc Eldar no doubt had already been aware of the same thing - he was already rising from his crouch as he tied off the last of his sutures, and he sprang over, facing Gitskragga across the patient's body.

"This one's mine. Hands off," the Ork growled.

"Hands off? Planning another totally unnecessary amputation?" Doc Eldar replied.

I caught the eye of Gitskragga's assistant and tilted my head off to the side, towards an undamaged cargo crate several more meters away. As nonchalantly as we were capable of, we ambled over and leaned against it, side by side. Neither of us said anything, as we watched the ongoing argument. Gitskragga's assistant produced a packet of lho-sticks from his shirt pocket, drew one, and offered the packet to me, which I waved off. He shrugged and lit the stick, still saying nothing, a pattern I was fully agreeable with continuing.

Before us, Doc Eldar stepped back a pace, and his knife appeared ready in his hand. "Very well. I will throw, and not move until it comes to a full stop. Whoever the point ends up facing will get to treat this patient." His hand flicked upwards, and his knife spun into the air, reflections glittering from its edge.

As it fell back towards the deck, Gitskragga stepped over the prone patient and held out his hand. The knife plunged into his palm, barely slowing until the handle slapped against his skin. The Ork flipped his hand over, examining the point protruding from - I assume - between his metacarpals. "Hmm. Looks like it's pointed at me."

How did Doc Eldar look when he was furious? Much like he did normally, truth be told. There weren't a lot of clues. But his stance was slightly different, as was the set of his eyes, and I suspect he was contemplating a lunge. He probably could have retrieved his knife and slit the Ork's throat before Gitskragga could react...but he did not put this to the test.

Instead, he gestured at the knife. "I request that you use that for the work instead of your butchery tool. Patients deserve the best we can provide them."

Gitskragga tugged the blade free of his hand, squinted at it, and nodded. He knelt beside the patient, then looked back up at Doc Eldar. "Here. I'm out of staples. How about you suture him up, eh?"

For this patient, at least, there was no argument over anesthetic - a blow to the head had rendered him unconscious, and his other wounds consisted of two pieces of metal in one arm and a larger one transfixing his right thigh. Dok Gitskragga removed the metal while Doc Eldar closed the wounds, and within a couple of minutes the work was done. Then they stood, and the Ork handed over the knife once more. "Right," he said, apparently having no other words. Doc Eldar said nothing at all, merely nodding and turning away.

I exchanged a final expressive shrug with my opposite number, then we turned and each followed our own boss.

I don't know what happened to that man. Perhaps he's still serving Dok Gitskragga, or perhaps the Contessa von Leostradt tired of her Ork physician and sent him away, and now he's returned to a normal life. Or maybe he's dead, that's always a possibility. But I feel reassured, one way or another; if he's alive, there's someone else out there who truly understands what I went through. And if I do turn out to be destined for a special kind of damnation for my actions, at least I won't be alone there.

It feels really good to write again. I have a lot of free time until the end of the month, so I want to get a fair bit more writing done while I have the opportunity. If anyone has suggestions or requests for things they'd like to see in future stories, I'd be happy to incorporate them, I like working with audience suggestions.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 04:06

SavTargaryen: Sep 11, 2011

Kylaer posted:

And here's the other half! Glad you're enjoying, let me know your thoughts!

It feels really good to write again. I have a lot of free time until the end of the month, so I want to get a fair bit more writing done while I have the opportunity. If anyone has suggestions or requests for things they'd like to see in future stories, I'd be happy to incorporate them, I like working with audience suggestions.

This owns. You own, dude.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 04:37

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

Kylaer posted:

And here's the other half! Glad you're enjoying, let me know your thoughts!

It feels really good to write again. I have a lot of free time until the end of the month, so I want to get a fair bit more writing done while I have the opportunity. If anyone has suggestions or requests for things they'd like to see in future stories, I'd be happy to incorporate them, I like working with audience suggestions.

God bless you

# ? Aug 6, 2015 04:52

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Dok Gitskragga doesn't feel quite like an modern, 3rd ed onwards, Ork to me, but it's still great. A bit more fonetik spellin' might help with that. The anaesthetic thing and the journals is particularly jarring though, what with Ork Painboyz just having a big mallet handy for that normally, so maybe the spirit of that scene could be saved while further fitting the expectation by a "wherez yer big hammer?" line or something.

That's totally just nitpicking though, since the focus is on the narrator and his counterpart and that works great.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 06:35

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Sulecrist posted:

I took that to be another clue that the Thousand Sons had been loving around with forbidden lore for a long time. I think it's also where the Thousand Sons might have first conceived of him as a potential sleeper agent. Alternatively, he had been planted long before and his encounter with the Marine was either his rediscovery or a hint that even line legionaires knew some dark espionage poo poo was going on.

Yes, he had been planted long before that. The Thousand Son commenting on that is a hint that his name is maybe not his own. He was already influenced by Horus back in his childhood when the mutated monsters ate his family in the wastelands, which was supposed to install fear and hate of wolves into him. It also made him an orphan, like the real Kaspar Hauser had been. The Thousand Sons never had anything to do with him being a sleeper, it was all a long-time con to get them and the wolves both. And it worked until he finally woke up at the end.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 10:52

berzerkmonkey: Jul 23, 2003

Mechafunkzilla posted:

I still laugh thinking about Dan Abnett's spectacularly ill-conceived idea to have one of his characters be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassin.

It wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but there was no reasoning behind it, other than "The Cabal wanted to." If Abnett had explained the reasoning behind it, I don't think it would be so reviled by people.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 13:41

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

Arquinsiel posted:

Dok Gitskragga doesn't feel quite like an modern, 3rd ed onwards, Ork to me, but it's still great. A bit more fonetik spellin' might help with that. The anaesthetic thing and the journals is particularly jarring though, what with Ork Painboyz just having a big mallet handy for that normally, so maybe the spirit of that scene could be saved while further fitting the expectation by a "wherez yer big hammer?" line or something.

That's totally just nitpicking though, since the focus is on the narrator and his counterpart and that works great.

No, I appreciate the nitpicking, all kinds of feedback help improve my writing. I actually don't know any Ork dok fluff except some half-remembered stuff from the 1st Edition rulebooks, and I do believe they had syringe-squigs with all kinds of medicines back then, but I'll rework that line a bit. The medical journals thing doesn't fit the rest of the character, it's true, so that will also get changed a bit. I just love the idea of Gitskragga giving Doc Eldar poo poo about not following standards and then grafting an arm onto someone's leg, but I can do that in a slightly different fashion.

The fonetik spelling, though, was something I considered and then decided against. It's not fun to write and (for me, at least) it's not fun to read, either. I'd rather let the reader give characters their own voice, although I do try to keep speech patterns consistent for given characters (Doc Eldar, you may have noticed, never uses contractions).

berzerkmonkey posted:

It wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but there was no reasoning behind it, other than "The Cabal wanted to." If Abnett had explained the reasoning behind it, I don't think it would be so reviled by people.

I could swear that it is stated in the book that the Cabal was trying to prevent humanity from overcoming their own internal divisions and uniting, and that's why the assassin guy killed these various people throughout history. Did I just make this up?

# ? Aug 6, 2015 15:41

berzerkmonkey: Jul 23, 2003

Kylaer posted:

I could swear that it is stated in the book that the Cabal was trying to prevent humanity from overcoming their own internal divisions and uniting, and that's why the assassin guy killed these various people throughout history. Did I just make this up?

Maybe? It's been a while since I read it, and if that was the explanation, it certainly didn't register with me. That does sound like a very Eldar-thing to do.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 17:05

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Kylaer posted:

No, I appreciate the nitpicking, all kinds of feedback help improve my writing. I actually don't know any Ork dok fluff except some half-remembered stuff from the 1st Edition rulebooks, and I do believe they had syringe-squigs with all kinds of medicines back then, but I'll rework that line a bit. The medical journals thing doesn't fit the rest of the character, it's true, so that will also get changed a bit. I just love the idea of Gitskragga giving Doc Eldar poo poo about not following standards and then grafting an arm onto someone's leg, but I can do that in a slightly different fashion.

The fonetik spelling, though, was something I considered and then decided against. It's not fun to write and (for me, at least) it's not fun to read, either. I'd rather let the reader give characters their own voice, although I do try to keep speech patterns consistent for given characters (Doc Eldar, you may have noticed, never uses contractions).

If you can, get your hands on the Gorkamorka rulebooks. There's loads in the campaign section there about what doks will do to patch up an injured ork.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 17:32

berzerkmonkey: Jul 23, 2003

Arquinsiel posted:

If you can, get your hands on the Gorkamorka rulebooks. There's loads in the campaign section there about what doks will do to patch up an injured ork.

They can all be found on YakTribe. I think you have to sign up to download them though.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 19:58

TheArmorOfContempt: Nov 29, 2012; Did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?

Klaus88 posted:

That is not the first time there has been a "modern" reference in 40k fiction.

The Emperors Gift has the main character refer to a collection of North American "Kings" and the line "all men are created equal'

That is an insult to the slave holding aristocracy that formed the United States drat it!

Hyperion's commentary on the notion of "all men are created equal" is one of my favorite of any 40K novel.

"I'd often wondered if the words sounded as false and idealistic to those men's ears as they did mine. Truly, humanity has an infinite capacity for self-deception Deceit is a sin against purity, as recorded in the fifteenth decree of piety. To lie is to stain the soul, and he who decieves himself is thrice-blackened by falsehood. All men are not created equal. The proof is there for the eye to see."

# ? Aug 6, 2015 20:25

Annointed: Mar 2, 2013

Uroboros posted:

Hyperion's commentary on the notion of "all men are created equal" is one of my favorite of any 40K novel.

"I'd often wondered if the words sounded as false and idealistic to those men's ears as they did mine. Truly, humanity has an infinite capacity for self-deception Deceit is a sin against purity, as recorded in the fifteenth decree of piety. To lie is to stain the soul, and he who decieves himself is thrice-blackened by falsehood. All men are not created equal. The proof is there for the eye to see."

Mine too. It's encapsulates his views of purity, a contempt for humankind and how the idea of treating others equally has been lost to the twilight of millennia so perfectly.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 20:59

TheArmorOfContempt: Nov 29, 2012; Did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?

Annointed posted:

Mine too. It's encapsulates his views of purity, a contempt for humankind and how the idea of treating others equally has been lost to the twilight of millennia so perfectly.

Pretty much, although I wouldn't say he has contempt for humanity, just high standards. He has a lot of good stuff in there to say about humanity, pretty much pre-destined to rule forever in a galaxy that hates us.

# ? Aug 6, 2015 23:36

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# ? May 10, 2024 06:32

victrix: Oct 30, 2007

Are there any good Deathwatch novels?

# ? Aug 9, 2015 00:59

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Warhammer: After 18 years, finally an end

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