The Rutabo Chronicles

[thechosenone]

I'm a big fan of narrative campaigns. I've participated in one at my local battle bunker in Downers Grove Illinois and always made my battle reports for Medeusa V long narratives.

I'll try and fill this thread up with my stuff either for your enjoyment or not, who knows

Christopher

[thechosenone]

The Narratives are good to have but I think its important to have some write ups involving our characters prior to their actions here. What follows is an account of my character securing his base of operations, a launching point for all his neferious schemes. Its a piece of fiction that i used a few weeks ago for a chaos guild someone tried to start on warseer called the Order of the Eye of Chaos which i think fizzeled out



The fields of Belcercis have come to resemble the scarred surface of a dead moon, a moon that bleeds. The blood of the fallen bathes the burnt earth and runs deep into its cracks as if to quench some ancient thirst for death.

The planet is fed not by loyal blood belonging to faithful soldiers of the Imperium but tainted corrupt blood, the blood of traitors. The capital of Belcercis bleeds as well, plumes of smoke rise into the sky after being stabbed by heavy shells and lances of laser light. It returns fire in the form of big guns and columns of monsterous mutations and power armored giants. The defenders of the capital, Ghenna, fight not for loyalty or honor, such concepts are burned from their damned souls, they fight out of fear, desperation and hatred.

The warriors of Ghenna have endured for two years under siege. It was a war that began at their star systems edge where the floating fortress-temples of traitors and heretics clashed and turned the void into a silent graveyard of debris and death.
War them came to the fields, forests and mountains of the world where behemonths clad in power armor the color of gun metal and bearing the scars of 10,000 years of carnage. Like artists whose canvase is the fields of battle and their medium is death they forced their enemy from every crevase and declared that their can be no hiding place.

Finally this masterwork of war came to the gates of Ghenna brought by the hand of a true artisan, Rutabo Gares. A Warsmith of the Iron Warriors.

Rutabo, his name a playfully altered and shortened version of the man he was named after all those centuries ago before the fall, Pertrabo his Primarch. Through all the ages of strife and slaughter the name stuck.

His great work of art is almost completed, a few more bloody brush strokes remain. With Ghenna his he will have a base of operations worthy of him, and the rest of his Legion as well but such far reaching loyalties linger in the back of a traitor's mind
Massive shells rip apart the landscape throwing debris and dull armored figures alike into the air. rock and blood spray up against the massive form of Rutabo.made even more imposing by the teminator armor he's encased in. One of his great clawed gauntlets rises up to shield his uncovered head from teh hail of debris. There is no better way to experience war then with one's own eyes. Life through a visor is dull and filtered air flavourless.
His face is scarred, as should any face be that has witnessed war for so long. Its tanned gruff, sharp and cruel with eyes that reflect the merciless hatred in his ten thousand year old heart.
The cloud and of smoke and burning flesh passes and Rutabo watches his men scramble back into position with no sign of concern for the well placed enemy shell. Those that are dead are left to lie with no particular fanfair.

He thrusts a wicked claw in the direction of Ghenna's walls and screams his orders loud enough that no vox is needed. Spital and rage mix with words
"All guns let fly! Bring death and fire to the base of the western wall!" Rutabo watches as lines of havoks pound the targeted wall with a fussilade of missiles and blinding flickers of Las cannon shot.

"Bring that down!" Rutabo's order is lost in the droning chant of the Iron Warriors war cry. The invaders watch the wall glow red as the lasers heat it and the missiles blow open the softened material. Defenders along the wall begin to fall down into the super heated debris that was once their wall.

Rutabo begins to march toward the gaping death wound in the city his company following. Panic and fear will have claimed everyone inside. This masterpiece is completed and now all the remains is the formality of claiming Ghenna.

The Warsmith takes his helm off his belt clip and places it on, the sound of hissing accompanies the action as it seals his suit completly. The helm makes him appear as a great horned beast of war.

With the helm on he sends a general message to all who can hear, enemy and ally alike.

"Ghenna!, Serve me in life or serve me in death! For those that resist you will become an example to the fate that awaits anyone else who may also show the same lack of vision. But serve me in life and you will know gift of war and oblivion's eternal bliss!"

Ghenna fell and his story begins...

[thechosenone]

The next piece's purpose was to explain my army's compositions. I had orginally wrote this for an attempt to put a guild together on warseer, called the Order of the Eye of Chaos. Anyway the next piece took place right after joining the guild and demonstrates the composition of all my armies united under one banner, Rutabo's.


The debris dusted flocks of slaves labor endlessly in the devastated streets of Ghenna. The damage the city suffered in claiming it was more then the Warsmith had initially expected. Fresh slaves captured in the conquest mingle with veterans of despair as they work.

The uncountable mass quickly scatter out of the way seeking safety that does not really exist. They part for the coming of three living Gods. Those who move with the greatest urgency are the veterans of the slave pits, the ones who have endured long enough to know what walks the streets. They are the Warsmith’s generals, his Taskmasters as they are known. Their roster changes frequently though there are always exceptions. Some of the Taskmasters are Rutabo’s own elite. Iron Warriors who have waged perfect precise war for ten thousand years. But those wars have rarely been fought alone. The Warsmith has allies all across the stars and the Empyrean who have contributed soldiers, resources, ships and slaves. They are allies that have served his interests long before the Order of the Eye of Chaos was born. Many of Taskmasters are representatives of these other dark masters.

Why should the slaves not think of these armored giants as gods? They have the same power, to grant life or take it with a mere gesture. Is that not the power of the Divine?

One slave, a fresh recruit who could know no better, is thrown to the ground, dead before impact.

The Killing Blow comes from a gauntlet-gloved hand the color of fresh gore. Brass spikes and sigils decorate the armor. Tarkis watches the blood of the dead man drip between his armored fingers and mingle with the cracked streets. He hears little of what his compatriots say and cares even less. He remembers the joy of feeling warm blood on one’s bare hands… a sensation he can never have again, one of many pleasures robbed from him. He has been built and repaired so many times by Lord Fenring, another of Rutabo’s many allied armies, that his bionics can no longer be hidden by synthesized flesh. The few that have seen him out of his armor are not sure if they are looking at a man or a flesh draped Necron.

He turns his head toward the other Taskmasters, the gears clicking in his vertebrae as he does. A face with little flesh snarls at his company, all of whom he towers over. The Cyborg is a ghoulish beast with a voice hollow and machine like.

“Why does the Warsmith waste his time with these Lords of Nothing! In one mortal lifetime we have shed more blood and burnt more worlds then any of them have in ten thousand years! I have suffered through more scheming and politics then I care to recount while allied with this circus and now this! One of them is even an Inquisitor! Just because he no longer has the favor of his corpse-god he thinks he has mine? I will break him!” Tarkis fumes. Unlike the other powers that have worked with Rutabo Tarkis is not some representative sent to watch and manage. He is the general of his own great army and he could not suffer the dishonor of sending another in his place. He believes himself the equal of the Warsmith, a fact few will agree to and that no one openly disputes if they value their lives.

“Silence that tank trap of a mouth Tarkis, you’ll scare the slave.” Soft dark words spoken by a man incased in polished armor black as the starless void and decorated with pink and violet lining. A cape of deep rose red cloth falls over his shoulders where the symbol of a bleeding heart wrapped in thorny rose vines is lovingly displayed. His face is a perfect flawless beauty. Those who don’t know the Dominus Dorian Cicero would think him more at home in some palace surrounded by sycophants rather then the theater of war. That would be a fatal mistake.

The dead breeze blows his long black hair wildly. A perfect smile precedes his words “Rutabo is more then capable of playing this game with the so called Order of the Eye of Chaos, rouge witch hunter or not. Cicero is one of the Domini, the faithful champions of the Goddess Callopie. To him a Goddess, to their victims a cruel and frivolous demonic princess who fashions herself an artist, her medium pleasure and pain, her canvas the human soul.

Irritation in the form of Tarkis and Cicero nag at the fortress walls of Baldwin’s mind unable to breach them despite their best efforts. The Lord Marshal Baldwin has served by the side of his warmaster since before the walls of the emperor’s palace were rent open by masterful siege. He is a broad and powerful man, his face grim and cold, a great scar over his left eye the reminder of an honorable enemy killed in single combat. A fight between warriors that Baldwin is always proud to remember, it had nothing to do with the spectacle of carnage and indulgence that Cicero or Tarkis are used to. His gunmetal grey armor has none of the adornment and pomp that the others have, aside from the black and yellow bracketing on his shoulder pads what more does armor need. It needs only function and nothing more.

Baldwin surveys the city limits quietly while the others spar with words. He is here to carry out his Warsmith’s wishes. He notes weaknesses and strong points, places in need of trenches, tank traps and pill poxes. He is aware of everything.

He notes one of the Warsmith’s Taskmasters atop a shelled out building. His body hulking beyond even what a normal Astrates is made for. Terminator armor and flesh as one. The Obliterator virus having long ago transformed captain Hypello into a near mad monster. He bellows for slave soldiers to work faster. Baldwin watches the thing’s bulky hand twitch and change into a fleshy Plasma Cannon that unleashes death into the whimpering crowd.

Baldwin turns to see another of the Taskmasters, a representative of Lord Fenring standing atop the city walls while fire burns on the horizons behind him. His name is Hector Godalis, a human though hardly recognizable as anything but a madman. He’s dressed in a commissar’s coat with tattered and desecrated uniform beneath. His face painted like some theater mime or clown. Blood spatters his outfit and white face. He laughs like a madman while hurling a god over the walls of the city and to his death, a captured Alpha Legion warrior who belonged to the former owners of Ghenna. Baldwin can’t fathom a more despicable end for one of his kind then at the hands of frail mortal. He lets that disgust vanish quickly. To think of Godalis as frail and weak is a quick and easy way to die. The general has killed more Astrates then some of Baldwin’s own Iron Warriors.

The Warsmith’s second can catch a fragment of Apostle Badista’s sermon that he delivers to a group of slaves who all kneel before the Word Bearer. Dark crimson giants with horned helms and white tunics walk the aisles of the whimpering mortals executing any who disturb the service.

Baldwin struggles to hold his hatred for the man in check. Displays like this are typical and they are the most frequent causes of a lost productivity.

Badista stands resplendent in his armor and pristine white tunic, a black cape blowing behind him as he reads from a flesh bound book. His eyes wild with zealous fury. Spittle flies from a mouth framed by a mustache and goatee that runs over pale necrotic looking flesh, the facial hair forming a sort of handlebar fashion. “Glorious is the will of the Gods who’s divine path will lead us all to salvation! Hallowed is the road that takes us out of darkness and unto their love! Blessed are they who fought the evil that would doom us all to a universe gone mad!” His words are emphasized by several rounds of bolter fire from his warrior priests.

Baldwin sighs silently to himself while Cicero goads Tarkis nearly to violence. The only Taskmasters carrying out the Warsmith’s will are those of Iron Warrior lineage. He prays to the dark powers that the Order of the Eye of Chaos will not be as fractious and frustrating as the allies he must already endure.

[thechosenone]

"... And when Ferrus chose to hunt the Phoenix it was he who became the prey!" Apostle Badista continues is relentless sermon standing atop the ruins of a tower near the landing touch down site.

All around him slaves labor to restore the great fortress to working order but its the Word Bearer contingent of Warsmith Rutabo Gares' force that work the hardest. They pour every fiber of their being into the task at hand. Santifying the newest addition to the Warsmith's force. A Bane Blade.

The Crimson armored and white tunic clad zelots walk the perimeter of the still and quiet vehicle chanting and swinging their censurs.

"Baldwin, how long does this non-sense go on for? This is truely a waste of resources. That vehicle needs the attention of the Oblitorators not this." Rutabo questions his second. Both stand on the ramparts above the fortress floor. The are hulking outlines against the setting sun, their terminator armor making them even more beast like.

Baldwin has no love for the excentricities of Badista's Word Bearers but in this he knows their is worth to their work. "Watch my Lord. Badista has his uses and this is one of them."

Rutabo's interest begins to wane until a dim reddish glow begins to seep from the cracks and visor slits of the mobile fortress.

"Glorious are the Gods, who lead us to salvation, who did fight the evil that would doom us all to mortal sin. Did they defeat the old spirits and cast them out? And now, with the strength of our will, they do call upon us to prevail against the corruption of all unbelievers." Badista shouts in a mad fury.

His Chosen respond in unison "Hallowed is the path of the Gods! Divine are we who walk it!"

Rutabo and Baldwin watch the wounds on the tank begin to seal. All the vision slits and turret interiors blaze with red light. A growl that echoes over the fortress and the battlefield around echoes from the Bane Blade.

Badista looks toward the two terminators. "The Vehicle has seen the truth! It desires salvation for its life of sin! It is ready my lord! It pledges loyalty to you and to the Gods!"

Rutabo nods approvingly and then tilts his head to Baldwin's ear "See that the vehicle is taken from the Word Bearers and properly secured."

"Yes sir" Baldwin answers dutifully.

"I'm pleased Baldwin, very pleased."