Slain by Elf

We have a new kill team and a new mission. A watch station has gone quiet, a watch station that was recently visited by the Mortis Thule space hulk. It is suspected that the orks that we briefly monitored whilst on the hulk disembarked and have attacked.

Our mission is to investigate the watch station, bring it back on-line, and deal with the orks.

One of the main problems is that the watch station has entered a state that it shouldn't have. 'What OS is it running?'

'Windows 98.'

'Windows 39,998?'

'Nope.'

The climactic fight is over, but not the climactic escape. Our minuscule section of the Mortis Thule, blown away from the space hulk itself, is hurtling towards a city on the planet below. It will hit with the force of a nuclear blast.

We have an option to try to use the engines of the imperial vessel that makes part of this section of the hulk to steer away from the city, but it will require manual control. Someone will have to stay behind.

Brothers Cadmus and Lucius work out the controls between them, and decide who will stay and who will leave on the shuttle. Cadmus says goodbye to his brave battle Brother, and walks over to the shuttle.

'Okay, so Lucian is staying behind.' Now that's a plan we can all get behind! Particularly Brother Lucius, whose long-con with the name similarity finally pays off.

I am the tyranid queen. What an honour, what a privilege. But with great power comes great responsibility, so when Brother Lucius decides to shoot me I have to remind myself of who I really am and stop myself from dodging.

Maybe I can go further than making myself a stationary target. The tyranid queen has chameleonic scales: can I make a fluorescent target appear on my body? Perhaps not without a bit of practice.

Brother Cadmus makes a reappearance, probably having hidden behind our dying watch captain for a while. He braces his heavy bolter and sends some automatic fire my way. Six hits. I'm still standing.

Brother Lucian shoots. I'll dodge! But, no, against my better judgment I let his bullets hit me too. I end up taking some critical damage, which is kinda good in a way, as it will make it easier to give myself my own critical blow, perhaps reaching in to my sucking chest wound to rip out my own heart. Sadly, the damage from the attack also stuns me for a round. I can do nothing.

Still, glory stays with those who do the damage. Which could be me, kinda, sorta. Brother Maynard charges in to Lucian, force sword raised, swinging like a, well, a tyranid. Two hits, one miss.

The system for allocating hits to body parts relies on reversing the result of the D100 attack roll, a system that we are still getting used to, apparently. 'Where did the force sword hit Lucian?'

It looks like the GM forgot to note the successful attack rolls. '...bollocks.' I didn't realise that was a hit location, but it sounds painful.

Before I can react, Brother Lucius attacks again. His bolter rounds slam in to my legs, the explosive rounds ripping one off and causing this body to die. My awareness, slightly worse for wear, is back in a space marine body.

I'm a little disappointed at first. The excellent timing of the entirely accidental mind-swap with the tyranid queen seems to have had no effect on the fight, the xenomorph dying within a round. But I realise that it was probably because of what happened, in that I caused the queen not to dodge a single attack. I stood there and took every shot like a Marine.

The damned tyranid queen won't stand still. I can't get a solid hit on the xenos scum unless I can dedicate a full round to attacking with my force sword, as it will simply dodge my attempts otherwise. I have to resort to my Avenger psychic power, engulfing the queen with flames instead.

Of course, I push the psychic power, because why wouldn't I. The power succeeds, but I am forced to roll on the Psychic Phenomena table. A roll of 98 on the D100 is pretty awesome, and I get escalated to the Perils of the Warp table.

Psychic Mind Swap! As the psychic flames fire from my hands, I find myself on the receiving end of them as my mind is transferred in to the body of the tyranid queen.

Now I'm the queen! The queen must be in my body, and if either of our physical bodies dies the effect will end. Perils, my arse. This is perfect. What better way to defeat the enemy than to become the enemy?

As the queen is trying to work out what to do with the puny two limbs my body has, I think I'll deep-throat this lascannon. Or maybe fling myself in to space. Or just see if I can rip out my own heart.

Fighting back the tyranid horde, trying to engage the tyranid queen, Brother Lucian finds himself at a disadvantage in running out of ammo in his clip.

'I'll reload my gun. It's all I can do at the moment.'

On the one hand, this is the first time in the adventure that Lucian has had to reload his overpowered Storm Bolter, equipped with a fire-select option that has let him mow down hordes and hordes of xenos without pausing.

On the other hand, he is needing to reload during the climactic battle against the tyranid queen and her horde, when he has been injured heavily enough to be sitting on 1 HP, having spent a fate point to unfortunately push him back up to a mere 2 HP. The timing could have been better.

'The tyranid horde rushes forwards, then hunkers down like a... hedgehog carpet.'

Our route through the hulk, as it disintegrates around us, finally gives us hope of finding a safe way off. An Imperial Navy ship is wedged on to the outer hull of the Mortis Thule, and a hangar with a working shuttle appears to be intact. There are even a couple of servitors active to help ready the shuttle. If only it were that simple.

The shaking, shuddering, and general mayhem currently being experienced inside the Mortis Thule is being caused by Imperial Navy ships shooting the hell out of the hulk, which we find out by having a view in to space at last. The hulk has apparently appeared in normal space on a near-collision course to an important Imperial world. The Navy is attempting to divert the hulk's course with explosions.

Not only are we under almost-direct fire, but the servitors, having got the shuttle prep underway, are ripped in half by a giant tyranid that was sleeping in the rafters of the hangar, now fully awake and slipping down to the floor to face us.

'Well, the bigger they are...'

'...the more damage they do.'

The space hulk continues to shake and shudder around us. As we make our way towards what we hope is a way off the hulk we see tyranids and genestealers in the near-distance, but none of them bothering us as they too are panicked by the massive disturbance of the hulk. Hell, if tyranids and genestealers are panicky, we must really be in trouble.

As we progress, a massive shock reverberates through the hulk. 'It feels like a nearby 300 megaton nuclear blast.' Yep, I'm definitely familiar with how that feels.

The blast actually rips a load of material away from the hulk, revealing, some hundred metres away, a hole in the hull to space, rapidly decompressing the area. 'Brother Lucian, I think the air is safe in here. You can take your helmet off.'

Such good-natured ribbing can't last long, as we have to avoid the effects of the decompression and deterioration of the hulk. At least we've got our mag-boots.

'You're not on metal. You're on rock. Your mag-boots don't work.'

'Let's call it ferrous rock.'

'If you like, but calling it ferrous doesn't make it magnetic.' And so we have to resort to making skill checks to aid us through the landsliding rubble.

Brother Lucius uses logic to work out the best direction to take through the rubble.

Brother Lucian successfully searches for a clear path.

'Uh, I'll use psyniscience.'

'How will that help?'

'Isn't it obvious?'

(The answer, apparently, is 'no'.)

The space hulk rumbles and shakes ominously, almost as if the whole structure is under the influence of a massive gravity well. Time is perhaps more of the essence than before, and we hustle down corridors looking for a ship suitable to get us clear of the hulk.

Such speed carries its risks, like running headlong in to genestealers. It was bound to happen sooner or later, it's just that sooner would have meant we'd have more ammunition. We have just enough to whittle down a couple of hordes until there are just a few individual genestealers left.

Brother Lucian has one of the genestealers crawling all over him. He goes in to full defensive mode, dodging multiple attacks as best he can. It's not quite enough, and is forced to use an available reroll of the dice.

'What a waste of a reroll.'

'What? It's either reroll or get ripped to pieces by a genestealer!'

'I know what I said.'

The Daemon Prince of Slaanesh Interrogator Thirl accidentally summoned rips him apart. And, with that, both are gone.

Thirl is gone, his mutant hordes are mown down or charred, and Assassin Clorr is in two pieces. '300 dead bodies, and not one of them is ours.'

'We once again exemplify our mantra: kill everything that isn't us.'

'Not only that, but a gate to hell was opened, and we neither opened it nor got dragged in to it.'

'It's a pity we didn't get to fight the Daemon Prince. It would have been an interesting...'

'...death?'