The Planetary Empires crusade continues, here’s the current map of the system with my force’s holdings. I grabbed a home base as a Star Port, and expanded to another Star Port on the ice planet. The advantage of those structures is that I count as adjacent to all tiles on all planets, which makes sense given that my Crusade represents an Acquisition Phalanx deploying from an orbital tomb ship.

Game Three: A Scythe in the Fields

“So many… unclean… biologicals…” said Nemesor Sebekh out loud, choosing to emphasize his ire by deploying his vocalizers. The group of Warriors next to him stood at attention, barely understanding the words he said. They were not part of their war-programming, so just washed over the near-mindless rank and file. Across the battlefield was a massing swarm of strange bug-creatures.

He let his distance oculars zoom in on one side of the swarm. Sebekh had to marvel just a bit: the sheer capability of these beasts to manifest the weapons they needed for a fight. From sword-like extensions on their limbs to massive bio-cannons, they were a strangely engineered race. In a way they reminded him of the destroyer cults amongst the Necrontyr: constantly refining their bodies to destroy all biomass. Sebekh shook his head: no, these creatures didn’t want to destroy all biomass. They wanted to consume it all, and turn it into more of themselves. They were unclean biology and needed destroyed, as fast as possible as far as he was concerned.

Sebekh sent a command to the Doom Scythe, to target the creatures that would be able to target it back. The crescent-shaped flyer dove across the enemy lines, scouring them with its flensing death ray and killing one of the massive gun beasts. A mighty winged leader-beast tried to reach it with flight, no doubt hoping its razor-sharp sword of bone could slice the flyer to pieces. But the pilot–some minor noble from his dynasty–jinked at the last moment and the beast’s flying charge fell short. The Doom Scythe turned down the lines and obliterated the other larger gun beast. With both of the gun beasts downed, the flyer moved to further distance to begin damaging the forces at more range.

Sebekh ordered his ground forces to close on the hordes, their burning gauss and tesla shots cutting swathes thru the foe. A few of the clawed beasts managed to reach the Ghost Ark and damage its integrity enough to deploy the warriors it carried, but other than that the biologicals were all stopped before they reached his lines proper. The last few beasts streamed away when their leadership fell, and the biologicals fled before him. Nemesor Sebekh felt that odd pulse down inside him that had reflected on the destroyers’ notions surge a bit. “Scour all life,” he whispered to himself, and began super-heating his body to burn even the grass he stood on.

Game Four: Night of the Wolves

With the Tyranids fled, Nemesor Sebekh set about ordering his units to conduct scans of the area. He would have preferred his Cryptek advisors be supporting the forces, but he needed their technical knowledge to find Trazyn’s prize for him. Soon enough, he got an interstitial alert from one of them. The Cryptek’s voice had a certain wheezing quality, perhaps an affectation from the time when she had flesh. Sebekh had hoped for news of the beacon, but instead she warned that a human ship was moving into high orbit at rapid speed, and that a land-based force was marching fast to match it’s approach. The human ship started dropping cargo containers which floated down on gravitic parachutes. A resupply mission, and by the looks of the approaching force it was another group of the augmented humans racing to get their hands on the supplies: no doubt ammunitions and fuel to power their fighting. “Now, that cannot do…” said Sebekh. He motioned to Warden Nesos, and issued a command to attack with all forces.

This breed of mutant warriors wore different, more utilitarian armor than the prior ones his forces had clashed with. They operated in much more tactical fashion as well, standing off and firing at times rather than simply rushing into melee with despite lacking numbers. A cluster of them guarded a spot where a supply pod was drifting toward, and unleashed their chemical propellant weapons at the Ghost Ark.

Sebekh’s Flayed Ones took a different track, and came up against one of the mutant biologicals’ transports. He hated unleashing them, as he had to watch for any signs of degeneration and curse amidst the others in his command. But they were effective at times. Setting them to tear apart the vehicle best they could, Sebekh readied another weapon he had brought for these battles. Too many of these mutant humans in their armor had refractive shield generators borne amidst their armor–and that was blunting too many of his attacks. So he had gone to the reliquary on the Tomb Ship and removed a potent surprise.

Sebekh’s dynasty, the Szerakhan, had captured a number of the fragments of the Nightbringer during their war of vengeance upon the C’tan. A row of them were stored in stasis units on the ship, and he had brought one along. Setting down the unit, he released the swirling entity inside out onto the battlefield, directing it with the enslavement protocols of its capture system toward the lines of the mutant warriors. A roaring metal suit–which scans said contained a corpse of a fallen mutant–rushed forward from the lines to face the swirling mass of C’tan energy, but it was quickly sliced down by the massive scythe of the thing. With the Nightbringer shard controlling the middle of the field, Sebekh’s forces were expanding on all fronts but one.

The leader of the mutants emerged from the transport, a frozen sawblade of a sword in his hands, and laid waste to the Flayed Ones. While they managed to drag down the squad that emerged with him, they were no match for his destructive might. Sebekh watched the carnage at a distance, and recorded the battle patterns of the great warrior. He would be a worthy match in the future. With the supply drops entirely disrupted, Sebekh ordered his forces to withdraw with their victory–to not damage more of their forces unduly. The sky-blue armored warriors would have to scrounge for ammo and fuel, and that would slow their advances on the spaces that Sebekh needed to search. “Good enough for now,” he mused.

Game Five: Mindshackle Interrogation

“Honored Nemesor, we have word of a human scout,” messaged Warden Nesos after a period of further searching–this time amidst the dusty ruins of a city. “Some manner of surveyor team for the humans has been creeping through the ruins. Should we intercept them and see if they’ve seen our objective?”

Sebekh sent glyphs of acceptance and satisfaction in response. His forces moved quickly into the city, and started searching the various spots where the surveyors may have hidden. Unfortunately, they must have issued a distress call, as with flashes of translation black-armored warriors from that same group of over-adorned mutant monkey-forms started appearing and massing for an assault.

His initial forces sallied forth to delay their attacks, including even his Canoptek Reanimator sacrificing itself to slow down the vanguard of the approaching force. The armored warriors fought well and with what he presumed they would describe as “heroism”. But their defenses and protection meant that they moved slowly. As long as he fed their jetbike unit things to distract them and whittle them down, he would have time for the search.

Ranged fire from the ornate monkey-form warriors’ weapons wrought terrible losses amongst his Flayed Ones in particular, downing all but one of the unit. However, one was still enough. Say what you wanted about the curse that held them in their thrall, but the one upside was that their scent for organics–at least those with proper “meat” to them–was ideal. It tracked the movements of the scout group of humans, and indicated to the Immortals where they were hiding: in a bolt-hole of a trenchworks.

A few were killed in the extraction, but the Immortals finally hauled up one poor Imperial scout–a trembling human who likely used his field glasses far more than the crude light-emitting sidearm he carried. Sebekh approached, and realized just what an inconvenience this meat-form was going to be. He couldn’t just translate away and take this one along for proper interrogation, and yet the warriors seeking to rescue him were coming in strong force and slicing through everything he sent to stop them.

“This needs to be quick, and I need to buy more time,” he thought. Sebekh ordered his Warriors into delaying actions. All he needed to do was keep the monkey-forms at bay long enough. The main group of warriors surged around the leader of the foes, and the combat ground on and on. The leader was close, had teleported in, and could only watch amidst his destroying of the Warriors while Sebekh issued a set of mindshackle scarabs onto the skin of the scout. As the burrowed in the man started screeching and screaming, as the skin on his forehead and temples writhed as the scarabs made their way into his very thoughts.

Again, Sebekh deployed the Nightbringer shard, this time to delay and confound the enemy with its strange permanence. Eventually it was smashed down by their forces, their blades finally taking their toll. The leader of the mutant monkey-forms continued to fight on, and Warden Nesos had withdrawn the Warriors to use their gauss reapers on him rather than continue the fight. Which was the window the warrior needed to attack Sebekh himself. The leader was lightning-fast despite his bulk, and Sebekh quickly realized he was outmatched in melee. “I guess I watch this one from afar,” he said, and recalled himself to the Tomb Ship while slaving his consciousness over-ride to the Doom Scythe so he could keep viewing the assault. The monkey-form leader seemed to do much the same with his own teleportation matrix that must be embedded in his armor, as a fusillade of tesla fire from the Immortals found weak points in his armor thanks to sheer volume.

At the end there were two lone warriors of the ornate monkey-form mutants left, suffering the fire of his forces while they stood back to back and slowly advanced. The had reached the edge of the trench, and could see only the remnants of the man they were seeking to rescue as he lay at the feet of the Immortals. His eyes were blank, glassy, and his jaw moved slowly as if he was speaking. Small bulbs on his head would bubble up where a scarab moved from one vantage point on his mind to another, crawling between skull and skin. With a final squealing screech, the last of his mind was well and truly stripped. Sebekh reviewed what had been obtained: only things of interest to the monkey-forms. Not a bit about his beacon. “Bah,” he said aloud. “Initiate full recall. Let the last of the monkey-forms have their rescue.” His forces began phasing out, all except the mindshackle scarabs themselves. They had nothing more to recover from the man’s broken mind, but Sebekh instructed them to stay. To become even more visible on his skin, and start causing pain. The ornately-armored monkey-forms would find their prize to be in very poor state, and no doubt need to carry out their xenophobic judgment on their own ally and subject of their rescue, thanks to the presence of the scarabs. “A little gift from me to you,” Sebekh said to the air, as if the monkey-form leader was there with him. “Enjoy.”

Painting Progress

Finished up the Nightbringer C’tan shard. This isn’t the original Games Workshop model, but a resin model from Creature Caster (called their Death Elemental). I think it makes an amazing alternative Nightbringer model. Really pleased with how it turned out, and I like the way it’s got hints of the Necron color scheme in the metal portions and weapon.

A reverse view to show the portal it’s emerging from is below. This does a good job too of making it feel like a shard: just a piece of the entity of cosmic power.

I also finished up 10 Warriors with Gauss Reapers, these are the ones that get ported around in the Ghost Ark. Good to have more models finished to round out options for the force.

In all some good painting progress. I’m still behind pace on hitting the goal (today is exactly 70 days into the year, so at a PL-per-day pace I would be at 70. But such is, and I’m still really pleased with the project.

Painting Challenge 2022 Progress

Warhammer 40k Necrons 2022 Power Level Painted: 39/365

Warhammer 40k Aeldari 2022 Power Level Painted: 53/365

Amidst our 40k Planetary Empires campaign my Archon was killed, so I thought it a decent time to adjust to giving my Necrons a spin… this is the beginning of their story.

Prologue

Nemesor Sebekh was accustomed to waiting. He was not accustomed to the terrain of this accursed system. Not a single one of the clustered worlds were tomb worlds, as all of them were too remote and too volatile to have been of use even in the expansion phase of the Necrontyr. “A large world of greenery, teeming with… ugh… life,” thought Sebekh, reflecting on why his dynast had assigned him to this task. Bad enough he had to bring war here, but to do so to meet the bidding of a noble from a different Dynasty. It was that most infamous of Nihilakh–Trazyn the Infinite–that he waited for now. Finally, the shadow of a Night Scythe passed, and the familiar crackle of translocation resonated.

“Ah, Sebekh, glad you could be here,” vocalized Trazyn, while Sebekh sent courtesy glyphs to the newly-arrived Overlord. “I know that our Dynasties have not always cooperated in the past, but the orders from the Silent King are certainly binding enough. We are to cooperate, to gather our strength together.”

Sebekh nodded at this. His Phaeron and that of Trayzn (Krispekh of the Nihilakh) were the ones instructed to cooperate, and perhaps to keep the notoriously disruptive Trazyn at bay, Krispekh empowered him to be the one to cooperate. And thus the duty of Sebekh was to endeavor to do just that. He recalled his own Phaeron’s words of command: “Trazyn has great needs, but also access to great power. You will endeavor to feed his needs, such that we might gain his power on our side.”

Sebekh spoke: “Glad to be here, in the name of dynastic cooperation, Overlord Trazyn. My Phaeron extends his esteem and hospitality, and I’m here to assist whatever pursuit you have amidst these planets. I was not provided further details of those goals in the packets of information about this system, just copious notes about current competitors, flora, fauna, the living cycles and industrial development of the human hive cities here, the precise water cycles of the lake systems on the moon…”

Trazyn interrupted the listing. “Yes, yes. I sent everything that might be needed. One never knows where the key to a puzzle may lie. Even in the music of a world, but that is a story for another time. What matters is this.” Trazyn sent a quick additional packet of information to Sebekh, and immediately the technical details of a casket pillar filled his consciousness.

Trazyn continued “I want you to help me find this. The glyphs suggest it is a boundary marker of sorts, placed by some lost dynasty that may have had claim over this pathetic system. And where there is a marker, there may be a path to the remains of that dynasty… and their historical knowledge of the War in Heaven. Take your forces and scour these planets. The conflict between the various young races at war here will be perfect cover to seek it out. I know only of its dimensions, that it is protected from long-range scan identification, and that the image of it–which I extracted at no small difficulty from the mind of some burrowing degenerate cultist inhabitant–included a set of curious plant growth upon it.”

“While you’re seeking it,” Trazyn continued, “I don’t mind other trophies or items of note from the various combatants in this system: their endless variety excites me, and anything unique you find I welcome you preserve with one of these.” Trazyn handed him a set of small cubes, and quick inspection revealed each to be a stasis projector–Trayzn was a collector and antiquarian, and Sebekh realized that even just sending him some frozen oddities would curry his favor. He placed them in an inter-dimensional pocket for safe-keeping.

Sebekh then responded. “I’ll search with you for this wayward marker, but with my own forces in a manner of my choosing. Investigating in more spots at once will help the search go quickly.” Trazyn’s nod indicated he was pleased with that arrangement, and Sebekh was glad that he would not need to sully his own forces with the Nihilakh amidst them. “Point me in the direction of where you found the inhabitant who saw this structure.”

Game One: Laughter on the Wind

Weeks of scanning had turned up little information on either the marker or natives who may have seen it. Nemesor Sebekh had his tomb ship in synchronized orbit in the system, with full stealth protocols enabled. While the other combatants in the system were racing to grab territory, Sebekh took care to catalogue the forces that were warring, as well as to set up reconstruction matrix projectors into high orbit–disguised as orbital wreckage–to support his troops on every possible battlefront. Sebekh’s adjutant, Warden Nesos, finally prompted that their preparations were likely well-completed, and that ground forces could start to be deployed to likely spots. At the very least the crypteks in reserve in the force could start to sample the soils and sort out how to run more effective ground-piercing data sweeps–as Sebekh had mused that the marker would likely be underground.

They began landing troops on the surface of the main planet of Scylla Prime, the planet’s name in the local vernacular, translated from all the fleet relay messages that were bouncing all over the system. Sebekh had chosen a spot that looked more remote, keen to avoid the places that had the thickest populations of humans and their degenerate mutant versions (both Astartes and the hive-infected qualified in this way to Sebekh’s reckoning). He was keen to also avoid the other marauding forces in the area: the blue-skinned goat-people, the mis-firing weapon of the Old Ones (the Orks), loathsome worshippers of a warp entity, and the inscrutable Tyranids.

Initial landings went well, and seemed utterly un-opposed. That is until the wind started carrying an odd sound that started to register on Sebekh’s and Nesos’ auditory capture nodes: laughter. Sebekh had only just laid down a change to combat protocols when a band of near-phantoms leapt out of hidden portals to strike at his landing forces. He recalled they were a form of theater mummers that fought in the service of the Old Ones: harlequins.

However, the resilience of his forces started to carry the day for Sebekh. While each elf lost from the small roving bands of them left them under-gunned. His block of Immortals not-surprisingly proved to be very effective, even when in such close range to foes. With new blocks of Warriors deploying from a Ghost Ark and spraying the elves with Gauss fire, the Necrons began to prevail.

The harlequins were seeking something that swirled in the winds of the planet’s atmosphere, perhaps drawing a bead on where supplies were stashed for them in webway portals. It made for an erratic fight, and one where even lowly canoptek swarms had a role to play. A particularly deadly harlequin, who dispatched a unit of Wraiths on his own, was stopped by a sacrifice protocol that had the scarabs merely cluster onto him and then detonate their cores–an explosion that he could not dodge in time.

As they had arrived, the harlequins fled in nearly the same breath. It seems like they had failed to get what they were seeking, and even if his forces were oblivious to the objective–his presence and the toll his forces took caused them to retreat. Sebekh’s forces were now bloodied, and he was already concerned that Trazyn’s deployment of him here in this system was going to be a painful experience. He shut down the doubt centers of his mind–slapping an hour ban on them–and got back to work with arraying his forces for survey and acquisition.

Game Two: The Enemy of my Enemy

After a few days of exploration Warden Nesos signaled Sebekh that their Doom Scythe’s long-range arrays detected a firefight in the distance. Swapping his sensor feed to that of the Scythe’s pilot-noble, he saw a tense firefight between an armored column of the blue-skinned goat people and what looked like two combined phalanxes of the mutated human strains–particularly large and ornately decorated mutants of their kind at that. While the initial ambush of the goat-people inflicted huge casualties, it seemed like the mutant strains were defending some sort of crashed cargo pods. “With luck,” thought Sebekh, “our forces can strike amidst the chaos and maul the humans while they’re so focused on stopping the tanks of the goats.”

Sebekh materialized his forces from his ship onto the far side of the battlefield from the rest of the fight, but very quickly his long range shots from Triarch Stalkers were doing enough damage that the humans sent some of their number his way. Two of them on primitive jet propulsion and hover-tech vehicles flew at his front lines, and the screen of Canoptek Wraiths. The Wraiths’ durability kept them distracted, until he commanded the Wraiths simply leave the combat making a firing gallery of his Warriors’ gauss reapers which tore apart the vehicles and their riders in a hail of green flensing energy.

Another wave of the mutated humans, these in more ornate battle plates, came rushing at Sebekh’s forces. As the subsequent volley of gauss fire slew many, and his contingent of cursed flayed ones tore apart the rest, Sebekh got only the most crude of scans underway of the warriors. They all seemed to have the same mutation-set, as if they were planned or literally grown from infant-status into these mutant forms… by design. “Ghastly,” said Sebekh to no one in particular, as he was surrounded by Immortals and Warriors only. “Refined biology is still disgustingly… biologic.”

Sebekh could see that the warriors were surely effective: a single one of their leaders circled and circled one of his Triarch Stalkers, and annoyingly Sebekh had to keep transmitting additional script to activate full quantum shielding on the great walker to keep it alive and functioning amidst the warrior’s onslaught. “All biologics have some crude effectiveness, some apex creatures amidst them,” he thought. “Still, put a mutated monkey-form into ornate golden armor and it’s still just a mutated monkey-form.”

The flank where the goat-people had tried to hit hardest was being reinforced by the humans, their warriors clustered around what seemed to be an escape pod of some sort. Sebekh was under-interested in trying to shift them from that spot, as they seemed determined to keep it.

On the other flank, his forces and the goat-people had eliminated all of the resistance, leaving the other strange pod to them. It seemed to be some sort of crude vat full of biological materials, and disgusted Sebekh ordered it destroyed on the spot. The monkey-forms got one, lost one. Good enough. The seeming leader of the goat-people had flown to that point as well, and perhaps he was interested in what remained of it. But of course, the flayed ones that Sebekh had somewhat reluctantly released alongside his troops were particularly interested in what was inside of this suit. Hopefully he didn’t tarry too long at the destroyed vat, lest they crack him open and wear his blue skin as their next decoration.

The battle was ultimately one where no side particularly triumphed over the other, and at least the goat-people had the good sense to not fire their weapons upon his dynastic troops while he too was attacking the mutant humans. Of course he’d have to annihilate them, but for the moment they were a convenient ally. “Enemy of my enemy and all that,” said Sebekh as he reinstated security partitions for the flayed ones in a pocket dimensional stasis. He then ran a debugging protocol on his Warriors to ensure none of them picked up any taint from the cursed flayed ones–but Warriors were the least observant so least likely to fall prey to what they see. “While I’m on old proverbs,” he thought, ruminating on the flayed ones as a dangerous tool to deploy amidst his forces “perhaps ‘monkey-form see, monkey-form do’ is appropriate here.”

Painting Progress

Part of this switch was the relative fragility of my Drukhari forces, but also part of it was finally pushing myself to complete the white whale of the Necrons army: the Ghost Ark. It was such a pain to complete, but now that it’s done I absolutely love the look of it and have enjoyed it in both games so far.

Also painted up a new Overlord to lead my forces, the one with the glaive and tachyon arrow. I adjusted the arm to have it pointing, which was a little conversion but one I’m really pleased with.

I’m nearly done with another ten Warriors (I’ll surely have them painted in the next post, for the next phase of the campaign), and have more to go after that.

Painting Challenge 2022 Progress

Warhammer 40k Necrons 2022 Power Level Painted: 14/365

Warhammer 40k Aeldari 2022 Power Level Painted: 53/365