A priest of the Imperial Cult preaches to curious citizens from the roof of his holy chapel.

It was hard for Belladonna to keep her eyes cast down, so that the glowing, swirling purple stain in the sky didn’t draw her gaze.

 The warp storm known as the Heart of Darkness filled half the sky above Dargav III, but to look directly at its pulsing glow was to invite madness. So, she forced her eyes downward at the sand in front of her, using her peripheral vision to warn her of the dangers of the surrounding crowd.

 “How do you find a psyker amidst this rabble?” asked her second-in-command, a hive ganger named Jonah. “They all look like shit.”

 “When I figure that out, I’ll tell you,” Belladonna said.

Frustration and Profit

The Tech Priest Malikot searched in vain around a still-working power plant to the north of his rivals. Although he found a few minor bits of techno-scrap in various buildings he searched (and had to use his Skitarii to convince the owners to part with their property), he found no sign of the psykers he sought.

At the same time, Jason Scarn was searching as far away from his rivals as he could. In the farthest edge of the town, the bounty hunter scoured the tall ruins of abandoned Imperial government buildings.

It seemed a good place to hide, but Scarn found the area largely abandoned. Still, he managed to discover a few overlooked bits of scrap,, including an old auspex, data crystals,  an ancient cogitator, and other odds and ends.

None were of great value, but by the time he was finished searching the area, his collection was worth more than 1,000 credits—not a bad day’s work.

Going Underground

Discouraged by his search of the shanties, Malikot computed that he might have better luck at a nearby operational power plant. Much of the facility was underground, and such an out-of-the-way locale seemed a logical place for wanted criminals to hide.

His calculations were correct: Although he found nothing on the ground floor of the power plant, he found a basement with a large hatch—a hatch that led to a huge underground level of rooms and corridors.

Meanwhile, Belladonna had discovered another surface entrance to the underground facility more than 100 meters away, and she also decided that the psykers might be hiding there.

She quickly stumbled into one, hiding in of all place, a long-abandoned but still-grotesquely filthy public rest room. The psyker attacked Belladonna’s henchmen by casting a spell and creating a noxious cloud of poison gas, but her hired thugs managed to evade the threat.

Eventually, by using the shadows of the half-dark facility, several thugs quietly eased behind the psyker and charged him. He was eventually captured. without loss of life.

Joining forces

Arriving from opposite directions, both Malikot and Belladonna entered a cavernous room, half lit by a still-humming power generator that dominated the space. It was here they found the remaining two psykers.

For a few minutes, the two bounty hunters and their minions engaged in a firefight with several mutants whom the psykers had placed under their control. As the psykers began casting witchcraft in the fight, Belladonna and Melikot withdrew and contacted Feracci by vox. It appeared that a united front would be required to face these well-prepared psykers and their mind-controlled gunmen.

Feracci agreed and entered the corridors, joining up with Melikot on one side of the generator room, while Belladonna prepared for an assault from the opposite side of the room.

(The thick walls of the ruins that Scarn was searching prevented him from being contacted, and thus he had no involvement in this final fight.)

When the three attacked, they charged simultaneously and spread out across the large room. Malikot used the giant power generator for cover, his men firing upwards at the mutants lining a railing of a second-floor control terrace. Feracci entered the room from the opposite side, his men seeking cover the crates and control panels available before joining the firefight.

Click here to read the conclusion of this fight.

Click here to return to the fight’s start.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.

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