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torsdag 14 juli 2016

Battle 12: A lesson of fire

Chaos has a relic, an object with an obscure purpose. The Harlequins know about this and want to retrieve it for themselves. In sector Styx is a plaza where the relic hidden in a statue. T he game is about controlling the statue when the game ends. This relic will be of great importance in the next great game if the Harlequin have it in their possession. 
- Location: Sector Charon, the desert city of Tartarus, Cerberus XIII
- Independent: The Harlequin

- Chaos Forces: Sons of Horus, the Unhallowed 11:th
- Points value: 800 per side

- Combat rules: Eternal War + maelstrom deck without objectives. 3 Cards on hand, can discard one each round.

Special rules: 

- All Harlequins have Infiltrate + (written down how they are positioned, revealed when enemy is within 6'' or unit move. If not described how they are positioned, use deep strike formation. Cannot score points for "hold the line" and the like without being revealed.
- All Harlequins have Outflank
- The powers of Chaos are displeased with the failure of the last game. No buffs for Chaos. Instead Chaos have one debuff. -1 magic die. 
- The Sons of Horus are allied to Zebaots forces. +1 to reserves roll.

[Author: Torbjörn (battle report) Joakim A (Epilogue)]


Acolyte Keren’s arm-plates were dripping from Eldar blood, and the floor beneath him was getting more and more slippery by the forming pool. He shook the lifeless body of the painted Eldar leader one last time. Partly to make sure it was really dead, partly to show his minions what a formidable champion of the Gods he was.

The ambush had been a close fight. The Sons of Horus and their cultist militia had advanced in broad formation on the objective. Some sort of relic-sword was contained within a gilded statue in Sector Styx, and the Lord of the Unhallowed 11th had wanted it.

Brother Semenawi and his Havoks had been the first to notice the statue, and the shadows coalescing behind it. A small figure with a grinning masque and an over-sized rifle had gingerly stepped out from behind the statue, and let out a blinding barrage of shrieking projectiles. Brother Semenawi had just raised his voice on the vox
channel, as he and his head got cut off. The heavy weapons
squad had broken and ran. At the same time a skimmer-tank had closed in on the right flank and made short work of a Rhino, leaving a burning wreck. Brother Nakfa’s squad had spilled out of the smoldering wreckage, as eager for cover as for vengeance.

On the left flank, a lone Eldar psyker strode across the street, incanting some sort of alien magic cant. The psyker was abruptly interrupted by the charge of a Spawn and a score of cultists. The Spawn had grabbed at it’s staff, as the cultists had beaten and stabbed it to death with an assortment of bones, clubs and daggers. The leftovers quickly went down the Spawn’s gullet in one slippery bloody mess. Now well-fed, the Spawn started chasing the hooded Eldar speeding out from the shadows across the street.

Simultaneously, on the right flank, things did not go as well. First, Brother Nakfa’s squad set an Eldar transport ablaze with flamers, and the occupying Eldar were cooked inside, screaming out in terror and suffering. Their screams had been as fuel to the fire inside the Sons’ souls. But then the four jetbikes had fallen upon Nakfa’s squad like incandescent spears, thrust right through the marines, skewering and slicing power armour like as if it was wet paper.

The skimmer-tanks had been moving about, trying to avoid the chasing Spawns, who had been
snapping and grabbing after the nimble Eldar vehicles with dirty appendages. The skimmers had mown down the last of Keren’s meatshield cultists, and wounded Keren himself in the leg.

“Assist me brothers!” Keren had voxed between gritted teeth, the taste of blood filling his mouth. The predator “Leaden Conqueror” had spun around on its massive tracks and fired on the jetbikes with heavy bolters and autocannon, shredding the meek Eldar constructions to ribbons.

Keren had looked towards the left flank, and saw his remaining cultists press on towards the solitary hooded Eldar, who had been moving straight towards him at an alarming speed. Surely the cultists could handle one Eldar, especially one so small, Keren had thought.

The cultists had surrounded the hooded Eldar, clubs and daggers wagging menacingly to and fro. As they started to chant their Litany of Hate, the hooded Eldar had simply spun around 360 degrees, blades lifted high, and the air had instantly erupted in a cloud of blood-mist. As the light-red air had cleared, the cultists all lay dead, and the hooded Eldar had already started moving towards Keren’s position with blinding speed.

“Your head will be fitted on my Rhino, xenos filth!” Keren had screamed desperately, as he had let one last mental shriek at the approaching Eldar. The Eldar had seemingly vanished from sight, and both of Keren’s hearts had almost stopped. Had it been that simple? As he had warily turned around, Keren had seen the hooded Eldar just a few steps behind him up on the second floor. Impossible, Keren had thought, as he had raised his flamer.
The solitary Eldar had then charged Keren, and as the air filled with the smell of promethium, Keren knew that if the Eldar reached him he would not survive the attention of the Eldar’s blades. Luckily for Keren, the Gods smiled upon him this day. The hellfire from the flamer had consumed and charred the flesh of the Eldar, who had fallen in front of him in a smoking crisp heap of cloth and meat.

The last Eldar to fall had been the pilot of the transport. A lone spawn had used it’s huge crab-claw to pull it downwards, and had then slithered a few sticky tentacles around the pilot’s small frame to pull him towards it’s hungry feeder-appendices. The screams had been muffled as the Eldar had been eaten alive.

Keren dropped the carcass of the solitary Eldar from the second floor, and as it met the cracked floor tiles below with a wet thud, he voxed:

“Rejoice brothers, for the Gods are smiling on us! I have given you victory this day. Round up the Spawn and secure the relic. Open a channel to the fleet for extraction orders and inform Lord Assab that we have the relic. Glory to the Primordial Annihilator!”

Epilogue:

... And Lord Arawn screamed out in unimaginable pain and agony when his skin and hair caught fire and his bodily fluids started to boil. Next to him burned the remains of the small troupe who had been sent by the Laughing God to deceive the enemy of its price. When the screams stopped only the black, burnt and empty shell remained of the dark lord.

 -Wait! What? What is the meaning of this, Lord Arawn exclaimed. I'm standing right here in front of the narrator, alive and with my soul intact. You cannot write me out of the play yet, my destiny...
-Your Fate was predetermined, but in the honor of our god you have cheated that fate and forsaken your reincarnation.

-I sent a double, the Lord replied guardedly, because I did not deem the stage worthy. Burning inside my chariot without so much as a sentence to be recited in the script. And the topic of reincarnation does not belong on my scene, so keep it to yourself and out of the play!
-Well, if it is commanded, continued the narrator. But it has cost us the price, and now the enemy has a powerful weapon to wield against our involuntary allies who serve the undead human god. What's worse is that one of Cegorachs chosen has fallen and been devoured by she who thirsts. The play approaches it´s next crescendo. So if I may continue?

-I have an audience with Mirehn Bielann onboard the craftworld Biel-tan this evening, but until then I have time. Lord Arawn bowed deeply and gestured invitingly with one arm while the other rested gracefully at the lower back. Be my guest, do tell!
-All around the great city of Commorragh awoke dark minded eldar to a new calling. They donned their masks and walked out into the maze, ready to perform the Laughing god's command as newly born harlequins....
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Additional images courtecy of the Commorragh gallery of depictive art:


















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