Imperial Vox Cast

Treading Where No Human Has Gone Before

by Luckee

The VTOL thruster screamed into overdrive and the Valkyrie rolled to the right, a missile contrail tearing its way past as the gunship continued to jink the incoming anti-aircraft fire. The officer barely felt the roll. His mid section went limp and his hand tightened on the overhead crash netting to keep his place. The strobing flashes of incoming ordinance lit the cockpit during the gloom of the predawn fly-over. Within the aft compartment, blue-clad soldiers prepared for a drop into the city. Their hands held tight on their weapons.

The officer stood near the starboard bail-out door, peering out of the viewing port at the darkened city below. The blackout made it appear serene and quiet and the officer took a moment to order his thoughts. Dark runs were always the worst. The brass thought they were a good idea for gaining surprise, but there’s nothing more surprising to a soldier than realizing he’s been dropped in the middle of a hostile zone with no support and no orientation. They always made the soldier think back to Armageddon, shot down and miles from anywhere. It made his jaw ache; never let any grox lovin’ commisar tell you that an ork doesn’t have a mean left hook.

“Commander, we’re approaching the LZ.” The co-pilot’s voice brought the officer back.

Touching the vox-bead in his ear he replied, “Copy that, waiting for spring.” His eyes shifted to the low-watt green bulb beside the door. He braced his knees for the landing.

The Valkyrie came about in a low leftward bank, its engines gunning hard to resist the pull of the moon’s high gravity. “Commander, the landing is a no go. The roof is a dome. I don’t get it; survey said the city was filled with large landing zones.”

Commander Bonnell’s eyes rolled. “Those surveys are orbital. Captain Harrow.”

The pilot’s voice came through, “Yes, commander.”

“Scrub this. Find us a nice street and bring ‘er in low; we’re gonna shimmy down to the deck.”

“You got it, sir.”

The valkyrie completed its turn and dove down toward the street. Its VTOL wing mounts swiveled to bring the craft level as the Elysian commandos began to rope down to street level. In perfect form, the squad broke into two and moved to cover the DZ from both sides.

“Sir!” General Whalice stands by the fortified window looking out over the xenos city. His aide ferries the comms servitor’s message for review.

“Yes, staff sergeant?” General Whalice lowers his field glasses and turns.
“Sir, Commander Bonnell is reporting that after some difficulty finding an open LZ, he has secured his objective.”

“Well Felix, when dealing with the aberrance of Xenos, you must expect a measure of snafu. Once the armor reaches him we should be able to move the—.” A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye cuts him off. The general spins, drawing his gürer service six. Only the staff sergeant is before him.

Felix slowly lowers his canteen and looks about. “Are you well sir?”

“Yes, fine…we should be able to move the DHQ forward.” The pistol is holstered and he directs his attention to a vid screen.

The familiar’s glass eye takes in the advance from its elevated position over the command vehicle. Ahead, the lead tank strikes forward. The behemoth’s treads creak and rumble as they lumber over the rubble-strewn street. A heavy drum rapping legato fills the air, heralding the rockets of the hull-mounted heavy bolter. The xenos are dispersed before the fury of the Leman Russ Battle Tank. Platoon squads huddle around its armored flanks to protect themselves from the smattering of return fire.

The turret tracks to bring a building into line. A shell flies from the barrel, a dull pressure wave and the scream of incoming ordnance followed by the bloom of high explosive within the building. Support structures fail, building collapses. The steady fire from the tank creates more devastation than tactical advantage. Light infantry moves into the ruins along the flanks.
Ahead, two xenos pop up from the top of a building. An explosive is loosed from their snub-nosed cannon and explodes in the street. No casualties. The blast ruptures an innocuous-looking collection of pipe works, only too late—it reveals them to be plasma conduits. A great wash of blue-green fire engulfs the flank of the Leman Russ in an evil conflagration. A squad is consumed in the blast. Tank unharmed. Crew cooked alive.

The Eradicator, next in line, veers left and drives into the ground floor of a building. A detour is cleared. The column continues forward around the stricken machine.

“Get some servitors and clean this place up. Emperor, it looks like someone drove a tank through here. Felix, tell Phelps not to destroy every building. Those shells don’t sprout from the coolant mold.” The new DHQ is a mess. On the second floor of the building, the comms relay and data vid screens are being erected; meanwhile a unit from the First Rifles is fortifying the lower floor.

Whirring and clicks come from the comms servitor. Felix moves to collect the spew of ticker tape. “New intel from the front. Advances all across the city are meeting slackened resistance and are pushing forward rapidly.”

A great crash juts from the floor below and the two are cast to the floor as the building is rocked by a large tremor. As they collect themselves, the unmistakable sounds of las fire make their way upstairs.
General Whalice draws his sword and activates its power field in one motion. “I wondered if I would have the chance to use this today.” The two barrel down the stairs into a wall of smoke; the room has been thrown into chaos and figures come to grips in the darkened swirl. After-images sear across the general’s retina as the purple-white beams of lasgun fire penetrate the darkness.

The banister groans in protest under the general’s stately weight as he leaps into the fray. Before him, figures move through the gloom. “Emperor, make mine enemies ridiculous.” With benediction in mind, General Whalice surges forward. First to cross his path are a duo of Kriegian soldiers. Their masked faces turn as he approaches, but with their steady calm, they register his rank and fall into flanking positions. “We need to find out where they came from. Were either of you down here when they appeared?”

“Sir, hostiles encroached from the basement, preceded by smoke charges and possibly a tunneling apparatus.”

“Excellent. We need to cross the room and—” A blade slashes toward the general. Ever ready, General Whalice snaps his sword up to parry and he forces his foe’s blade down and across. His left hand lashes out and strikes the creature across its xeno face, knocking it backwards. The power sword drives through armor, cloth, and flesh, finding the foe’s innards. To the left, another approaches and fires a gout of lethal acid into the trio. Caught by the acidic spray, one Kriegian’s death mask sizzles away in the caustic deluge. The other brings his bayonet up in perfect drilled form; the blade bores into the weapon’s feeder hose and unleashes the acid’s fury on the bearer. His bayonet, now ruined, is discarded; he recovers his partner’s and hooks it on.
To the front, a growing volume of lasgun fire points toward the largest group of belligerents. Through the thick haze, the general makes out a soldier in a daring play with three adversaries. The soldier cuts horizontally, disemboweling the first foe, and brings his own head down and away from a strike from the second. The now overbalanced foe is tripped and hamstrung by a sudden knife in the soldier’s off hand. The third, however, now in an optimum position, drives forward with the confidence of a predator. A bright ruby ray shines from the darkness of the soldier’s wrist and bores a hole through the attacker’s center of mass.

A strike from his left draws the general’s attention. He quickly dispatches this new foe with a lunging and brutish strike. By the time he looks back, the mysteriously adept soldier is gone. Not being the time for distractions, the General rallies the remaining squad members and staff sergeant Felix. “We seem to have sent them off for now. Corporal, clear the basement and find out if this building is still defensible. Sergeant, get me some information.”

Hand to the comm bead in his ear, Felix relays the reports. “General, we have incursions all along our rear. The xenos managed complete surprise and our forces are hard-pressed to reestablish a line.”

General Whalice straightens his posture and sheaths the deactivated sword. “Get me the Third and Twelfth reserve companies. We’ll need to push them straight forward to shore up our flank in time. Get in contact with Lystra and make sure her flanking move hasn’t been stalled.” The room qickly set about the tasks. “Looks like our work here has just begun.”

Cities of Stories (and Death)

by Klarkash-Ton

I’ve always been fascinated by urban warfare. I’m not sure what exactly it is about it that appeals to me, but it’s always been something that interests me. Thus, when I finally got my hot little hands on the Cities of Death expansion, I couldn’t wait to read it and start using it on the tabletop. However, while the rules impressed and excited me with their potential both mechanically and as tools for narratives, I was sorely disappointed with the settings described in the book. 80 pages and a mere two of them were devoted to anything other than Imperial cities (a two-page picture of an Ork settlement). Even the stories of famous city-fighting battles of 40k were all set in Imperial hives or fortresses. Here was a wonderful chance to develop the setting and the game in exciting ways, and it was squandered. Well, no more, because today we’re going to discuss the myriad possibilities that can be created by using Cities of Death to portray urban warfare in Xenos cities. Please note that I’m going to discuss little in the way of specifics in this article, but rather put forward ideas and thoughts that might provide inspiration to you as you seek to create your own unique narrative Cities of Death games.

With the release of the “Assault on Black Reach” box set, Orks had their place as one of the primary antagonists of the 40k universe reasserted. With that in mind, let’s talk about some of the narrative opportunities that lurk in the foul environs of an Ork city. Given their penchant for taking slaves in addition to wanton slaughter, rescue can be a primary motivation for a force attacking the Orks in their homes. (There are some great scenes in Sandy Mitchell’s Death or Glory that can be used as inspiration for missions of this sort.) And this rescue need not be confined to slaves, but to materiel as well. A force that just lost a battle to the Orks might be desperate to reclaim the hulks of vehicles scavenged by Orks from the battlefield and brought to a Mek’s workshop. By playing with differing point totals and initial deployment rules, it’s possible to create the feeling of a lightning raid trying desperately to accomplish an objective and flee the city before the numerically superior Orks gather in large enough numbers to overwhelm the attackers. Assassination-style missions can also be used to create a wonderful narrative for an Orky city fight game. The recent emergence of Orks such as Ghazghkull Thraka, Orks capable of uniting the Greenskins in heretofore unthinkable numbers, has vastly increased the threat that Orks pose to the galaxy at large. The elimination of such Orks before they can unleash their hordes is a tactic that lends itself to the Imperium, Eldar and even Tau as the most likely users. Orks deserve special note as something of an inspiration for this article, namely an article written for White Dwarf by Cities of Death author Andy Hoare titled Cities of Deff (Best Title Ever), which can be found for free here.

At first glance, urban warfare would seem to run counter to much of the Tau style of warfare; urban fighting tends to be dominated by brutal, close-quarters fighting and produces incredibly high numbers of casualties. However, in the 41st millennium, one hardly gets to choose every battlefield, and upon closer inspection, the nature of city-fighting meshes with the Kauyon philosophy of battle. Urban warfare is perfectly suited to all manner of feints, ambushes, and other such strategies. Combine this with the relatively high level of technological sophistication that the Tau posses and you can create an incredibly dynamic and thematically satisfying game. Both the Booby Traps and Demolitions stratagems make sense for this sort of ambush battle, and can be flavored through modeling to produce very evocative results. And the possibilities become even more interesting if the players agree to tweak certain stratagems. For instance, allowing Master Snipers to affect Sniper Drones, even though their weapons don’t have the Sniper rule, makes sense and can produce scenes of enemy soldiers cautiously picking their way through the streets of a Tau settlement, scanning the skies for where the next hovering Drones appear to rain death upon them before disappearing. Allowing the Siege Shells stratagem (a stratagem that, as written, can only be used by Imperial forces or Traitor Marines) to apply to Railguns can create scenes where teams of Kroot or Stealth Suits lure enemy soldiers into buildings only to flee just before Broadsides or Hammerheads pound the building to the ground, burying the enemy units inside. Perhaps the most thematically terrifying technique the Tau can employ is their non-Line-of-Sight Smart Missile Systems and Seeker Missiles, producing scenes where enemy soldiers find themselves suddenly pounded by accurate fire from hostiles they cannot even see. As far as the terrain itself, try developing some automated defenses for the Tau city, as that’s certainly something the Tau would employ. The models and rules for these could be easily adapted from those for Drones, but with just a little work could have their own unique flavor. The combination of techniques such as these allow for exciting Cities of Death games that still capture the Tau flavor, which can seem—at first—so inimical to urban warfare.

Eldar cities are things of beauty, and I can’t imagine a better reason to come up with inventive ways to use Cities of Death in a Craftworld than the modeling potential inherent in creating suitable scenery. But what would such fighting consist of that would differentiate it from the Imperial-centric fighting presented in Cities of Death? I think the ferocity of battle necessitated by the Eldar’s dwindling numbers is one of the cooler aspects to the race, and when fighting against invaders in the confines of their home, such ferocity and any-means-necessary thinking would only be magnified. Certainly, we see the depths (by Eldar standards) that Craftworld Iyanden was forced to sink to in order to defend themselves from Hivefleet Kraken. What other unsavory strategies would the Eldar find themselves forced to employ in defense of their last few bastions in the Galaxy? Perhaps allow an Eldar player to alter or even ignore the Force Org chart to field many more Aspect Warriors than normal, representing the commitment of massed elite forces. At the same time, perhaps a modified Kill Points objective for such a game could be used, making those some Aspect Warriors worth more to the enemy, representing how great a loss each one is to the Craftworld. This sort of scenario would emphasize both the sheer power employed by a Craftworld to directly defend itself, and how much the use of such resources cripples a Craftworld. To go back to the Iyanden example above, what about a game where a few Eldar “buildings” containing significant elements of the Infinity Circuit have to be defended long enough for those souls contained within to be channeled into Wraithguard and Wraithlord bodies? The Eldar would have the advantage of starting in control of these locations and only having to defend them, while their enemies would probably outnumber them, or gain additional stratagems to represent their furious assault on these key points. Both of these scenarios, if used within the context of a narrative campaign, could affect the forces the Eldar have available to them in later battles. Last but not least, even the terrain in an Eldar Craftworld opens the door to gaming possibilities. Perhaps a stratagem allowing the Eldar player to designate certain psyker units as Bonesingers, giving them the ability to move wraithbone terrain pieces, or even turn them into dangerous terrain for an enemy. Players could develop rules reflecting the impact of Perils of the Warp on the surrounding, psycho-conductive terrain. The possibilities are almost endless, and each could make for a unique and wonderful game and story.

Now, let’s talk about the Dark Eldar. Where Eldar cities are visions of light and beauty, a Dark Eldar city would be one of darkness and terror. Of course, this is no less evocative, particularly in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future. However, a direct attack on a Dark Eldar city isn’t something that happens much, so you have to be inventive in your scenario. What about a group of escaped prisoners trying to fight their way free of their captors? Surely, they’d be outnumbered, but the Dark Eldar would have to scramble to be able to stop them before they reach their goal, perhaps represented by the Dark Eldar units arriving from reserve on a pre-determined schedule. And perhaps grant a USR or two to the escapees to represent that they have to be pretty damn tough and clever to be able to even attempt such an escape. More horrifying might be a group of captives set loose in a bleak landscape where they are hunted down for sport. The Dark Eldar might have an altered Force Org chart emphasizing Fast Attack, while the captives would only have to survive for a set amount of time before being granted a (temporary) reprieve. Again, as with the Eldar, the terrain for a Dark Eldar city is full of possibilities, as far as both modeling and rules. Gruesome types of Dangerous Terrain would be the simplest way to demonstrate, but why stop there? With your opponent, develop rules for randomly activating terrain features where spikes burst out, or portals open, disgorging packs of feral Warp Beasts, or even emitters that produce Night Fighting effects the way a streetlight would dispel them. More so than for any other army discussed here, a narrative Dark Eldar Cities of Death game will require a lot of planning and discussion ahead of time by both players, but the rewards will be equal to what you put into it.

What could be more satisfying than taking the fight against the Necrons to the heart of a Tomb World? Surrounded my vast, cyclopean structures and dripping with eldritch energies, the landscape itself is as hostile to the mortal mind as the weapons of the Necrons are to mortal flesh. Certainly, the ancient, decaying nature of many Tomb Complexes (at least those that the Imperium has so far encountered) meshes perfectly with the types of terrain discussed in Cities of Death, with the only difference being cosmetic. And many ideas for terrain features can be found in the back of the Necron Codex, such as arcing power conduits that threaten to blast any unit foolish enough to draw too near. But what would drive sane creatures to venture into such maddening places? The Eldar know more of the Necrons than any other race, and are known to actively attempt to destroy these bastions of the Yngir. Space Marines, as well, make surgical raids on such worlds, planting explosives in the hopes of crippling the Tomb Worlds. Either of these could be represented in a scenario where the non-Necron attacker has to reach a certain point and hold it long enough to place charges before escaping. The Necrons are also notorious for capturing mortals and bringing them back to Tomb Worlds for all manner of sinister motives. While psykers of all stripes are the most obvious choice here, the C’Tan understand that the Galaxy has changed much and they have much to learn of their new foes, so almost anything could be justified as being captured by the Necrons for study. And here you have a rescue scenario that you and your opponent might design. For both of these, Necron resistance would stiffen as their opponents drew nearer to their goal, which again could be represented by judicious use of reserves. Of particular note, though, is the Sewer Rats stratagem, which could easily be re-flavored to represent portals out of which wave upon wave of skeletal robots emerge to fend off the interlopers. Of course the ancient and unsurpassed technologies of the Necrons mean that the sky is the limit when it comes to developing terrain features, stratagems, etc. And, perhaps best of all, almost every Necron player has at least one or two Monoliths sitting around that could easily double as terrain pieces for such games!

The idea of Tyranid cities may seem silly at first, but as long as what you’re looking for is to capture the feel of city-fighting, then Tyranid cities are a perfectly viable option, and they come in two major flavors. First, we have the Hive Ship, where a small team of elite soldiers races through a living vessel, with the goal of somehow destroying it before they are consumed. While it would look very different, this would play very similarly to the non-rescue Necron missions discussed above, so let’s focus on the other flavor: a world in the final stages of consumption. In this type of game, we see massive capillary tubes rising into the sky, digestive pools, and all sorts of other bizarre Tyranid biological structures that could easily have the Cities of Death rules applied to them. For inspiration here, look to the “Spore Chimneys” and “World Digestion” stratagems in Apocalypse Reload. Thus, we have a setting where the terrain itself is an aspect of the non-Tyranid force’s enemy. Missions for such games could range from soldiers attempting to secure a ship so that they can escape from the hell their world has become, to last-ditch suicide missions by doomed defenders to inflict as much damage as possible on the Tyranid menace before they find themselves consumed. The “attacking” player could represent the forces of his strike force by taking Deployment and Armory stratagems, perhaps with some tweaks on the latter to best work with the rules the players have decided upon for the Tyranid “buildings,” while the Tyranids could make excellent use of re-flavored Key Building stratagems (though a repackaging of Sewer Rats, as mentioned for the Necrons above, could work well, too). These battles would be desperate affairs on doomed planets, perfectly capturing the simultaneously crushing yet epic nature of combat in the 41st Millennium.

Well, that wraps it up for Xenos. Hopefully, something has inspired you to try out Cities of Death in a new light and with some new ideas. I know I want to start building Necron terrain after writing it! So stay down, keep to cover and make them pay for every inch!

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