Vastarian: Houston 2024 Day 2

Death Was The Colour.

Here at Between the Bolter and Me, we have spent the entirety of 2024 working on Vastarian - Dreams of the Pious, our Warhammer 40,000 setting. During that time, we have been encouraging others to get involved with it as a collaborative worldbuilding effort. The setting revolves around the cathedral world of Vastarian, which is home to hundreds of disparate Imperial religious sects, each venerating the God-Emperor of Mankind in their own unique way. The opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, a great tear in the fabric of the Milky Way Galaxy, has resulted in a psychic awakening across the populace of Vastarian. Each religious sect on the planet now believes that they alone were blessed with a psychic emissary touched by the Emperor himself. The tenuous peace on Vastarian has now devolved to bloodshed and persecution. During this psychic turmoil, the purifying radiance of the Emperor, the Astronomican, plummeted as if it were a tallow candle guttering in a tumultuous wind. In desperation, many of the Spyrehead conclaves on the planet pooled their resources and delved deeply into crumbling treatises on the nature of astropathic beacons and put into motion a fantastical gambit: fortifying the principle lighthouse in Ravachol as a psychic conduit to amplify the waning Astronomican.

In an effort to continue developing the setting, with the help of Bill Ford we hosted our first Inq28 narrative event at Asgard Games from November 15-17. You can read about the first day of the event here. The second day was the core of the entire event, where participants played three games that would lead up to a final game the following day (Day 3). There would be no way for us to capture every game played during the event, but we want to share pictures and write some evocative captions to help convey what happened in the games we were involved in. We hope you enjoy them!

The entire group at the Houston Vastarian Inq28 event!

Eli (redwetskeleton) continues to work on his daemonic creations, getting ready for their debut on Sunday!

Chris (pied_pewter_piper) and Cole Griffin (colecifer_xxviii) collect their wits (and cults) for the day ahead.

Alex (echoesofimperium) from 28 sent a bunch of patches to the event for all of the participants!

A walking shrine ambling around a church in Ravachol. The model was created by Nick Lungden (red_knight_1988). This shrine, among others, would find themselves entangled in heavy combat later in the day.

Jonny (Witchhammerstudio) preparing his cult, the Children of Cagoria, for the upcoming day of narrative storytelling and gaming.

All the participants listen to an introduction to start the day off, including a recorded reading of the Thomas Ligotti poem “Obstructions to a Dream”, from Pictures of Apocalypse.

Tarot cards, designed by Martin McCoy, were used to help randomize who would play each other and what scenario they would play!

Game 1a: The Order of the Luminous Dawn (the_phoenecian), The Cult of the Marrow King (7he_blindman), Adeptus Arbites (Eric Wier)

Scenario: Game 1 - The Hanged Man

Special Operations Unit Mitsukurina and a group of Adeptus Arbites travel across the blasted wastes of a former Vastarian sea, attempting to transport a group of psykers to a secure holding location before they can be conveyed to the Black Ships. Although this transportation is being conducted in an unmarked Chronos-pattern Ironcrawler, retrofitted with psychic dampeners, various religious cults have learned of its purpose and are intent on raiding the convoy to obtain the powerful psykers for use at the beacon in Ravachol.

The Order of the Luminous Dawn (the_phoenecian) advanced slowly though the desiccated ruins, the brutalist shape of a Ironcrawler just ahead, engine growling.

The Cult of the Marrow King (7he_blindman) sets its sights on the armored transport, hoping to find another psyker to flay the skin and venerate the Marrow King of Ivory and Gold! Their Vessel to house the corpse god was ready.

The disciples of the Marrow King descend on the stranded Ironcrawler, their exposed muscle fibers glistening in the noon day sun.

One of the cultists vaults up and over the armored transport with an inconceivable grace for such a mutilated creature. In an epinephrine-fueled rage, they plunge into a melee with the Arbites guarding the contained psykers. Simultaneously, one of the fantastics of Order of the Luminous Dawn closes in on the transport.

Like old times, Locus Mon, the Living Saint of the Marrow King, focuses its psychic tendrils into the delicate mechanisms of the Ironcrawler, overheating its containment cells and disengaging its locks, allowing the trapped psykers to escape.

Seeing an opportunity, the Rogue Trader, and their associates amidst the Order of the Luminous Dawn, brokers a temporary alliance with the Enforcers guarding the Ironcrawler—if the psykers won't reach the Black Ships, they are better off in the company of a respectable schism of the Imperial Creed, and not the degenerates of the Marrow King.

One of the acolytes of Saint Vespera wasted no time to honor the tenuous alliance, sinking their chain blade into one of the Cult of the Marrow King.

Despite the combined efforts of the Enforcers and the Order of the Luminous Dawn, Locus Mon was able to kidnap one of the subdued psykers, carrying them over the red wastes.

One of the cultists from the Order of the Luminous Dawn trained their boltgun at the fleeing servo skull and their captive, but their aim wasn't true. The Emperor clearly had other plans for the unfortunate psyker?

Game 1b: The Cult of the Lightbringer (davetaylorminiatures), Lux Uteri (colecifer_xxviii), The Church of the Red Athenæum (btwnbolterandme), Adeptus Arbites (Greg Wier)

Scenario: Game 1 - The Hanged Man

The Adeptus Arbites guard a specialized Arvus Lighter retrofitted with psychic dampeners. Various religious cults have learned of its purpose and are intent on raiding the convoy to obtain the powerful psykers for use converting the Ravachol lighthouse into an astropathic beacon.

Three cults, all opposed to building the beacon in Ravachol, approach Lighter to deprive the Spyreheads of much needed resources…

The towering form of Domina Gemituum, an ancient reliquary animated through the efforts of Countess Ryn of Holy Terra, blankly stares down at the impending carnage.

Countess Ryn commands a host of living suits of armor, the Lux Uteri (colecifer_xxviii), towards the imprisoned psykers in the Arvus Lighter. The heavy plate armor trudges forward in lockstep with a luminous glow emanating from their lifeless interior, gleaming menacingly off of their broadswords.

A group of Lux Uteri break off from the main group and close in on Marcelo Lythgoe, as he covers the advance of the Church of the Red Athenæum. Lythgoe unleashes controlled bursts from his Urdeshi Automatic Rifle as the glowing suits of armor amble forward.

Contingents of The Cult of the Lightbringer (davetaylorminiatures) rush towards the Arvus Lighter, paying no mind to the animated armored suits of the Lux Uteri. Without exchanging a single word, a shared goal and kinship is apparent.

A desperate Adeptus Arbites sniper targets the assailants closest to the ship, but with each cultist dispatched another steps forward. In the tumult of the assault, some of the imprisoned psykers begin to break free of their psychic dampeners and emerge from the Lighter.

Ligeia Orr, Prophet of the Crimson Veil, advances toward the Arvus Lighter with her companions in the Church of the Red Athenæum, intent on keeping any rogue psykers from the hands of the Lux Uteri.

Anja Winterson, champion of The Cult of the Lightbringer, engages in combat with an Adeptus Arbites enforcer. Any vestiges of calm that Winterson once had are burned away as blades locked. She will show all of these apostates the true path towards the Emperor’s light.

The attention of Madame Eldur, Saint of the Cult of the Lightbringer, is abruptly pulled away from the rogue psykers in the Arvus Lighter as an abomination from Ordo Hereticus slinks from the shadows. A truly ancient creature, twisted and warped to the point of no longer appearing human, Curse Blackened Methuselah shambles within striking distance of Madame Eldur, its mouth agape in the mockery of a smile. Its Neumann Carapace Blade flickers forward with celerity unbefitting such a massive and ungainly creature. Madame Eldur just barely deflects the blow with one of her bladed appendages, as she feels her skin start to crawl as though she was being groped by the hands of innumerable wretched souls frantically grasping for help, her head filling with the mournful cries of thousands of long forgotten souls. A projection of this creature's countless victims? With pangs of terror leaching into her mind, Madame Eldur knows she is battling for her life.

In a whirlwind of blood and misery, both Madame Eldur and Anja Winterson are left broken on the ground. A dry cackle fills the air, low and malevolent.

The Church of the Red Athenæum arrives at the Arvus Lighter, killing two of the rogue psykers in a burst of autogun fire. Kirill Blokhin sees a horrific creature dispatching some of The Cult of the Lightbringer, and unleashes a torrent of lead slugs at the beast, pulling its attention away from hapless victims at its feet.

+++++++++

Luminarch Conclave (itswhatevan) advances across the desolate wastes of Vastarian, a lighthouse on the bleak horizon.

Zealots of the Osteodoxykal Spirit Conflagration (cryptacrylic) advance through the gray emptiness of the surrounding landscape searching for any makeshift shrines where they might beseech the God-Emperor for strength for the coming struggles.

Presbyter Alcubierre the Blind, Bastard Scion of Navredo House Oberth, oversees the other beaconites as they repel cultists of the Forever Tabernacle of His Holy Bosom.

The Relic Bearer, Devotee of the Mater Imperatrix, approaches a shrine (created by knucklebones_miniatures) as a cultist of the Blood Pilgrims of Nexhara approaches from behind, pistol drawn.

A horrific spectacle to the Marrow King towers above the Elocutor, the bloodied skins of the monument contrasting with the warrior’s gleaming armor. It needed to be destroyed, as every second of its existence was a blasphemy to the true Emperor of Mankind.

Moon Hoof, last of the Intrépide, agent of the greater YOD cult conglomerate, found its way to Ravachol, intent on finding the lighthouse that would become an astropathic beacon.

Eli (redwetskeleton) continues to work on his daemonic creations, this time continuing to paint the Paramour!

A warrior from the Imperial Menagerie (lukeintotheabyss) finds themselves beneath the keening teeth of a chainblade wielded by a devotee of the Cult of the Lantern.

Game 2a: The Church of the Third Specimen (martin.mccoy.art), Beaconite Astroqabalic Survey party (weirdingsway), Synod of Reclamation (brad506187), The Church of the Red Athenæum (Adam Wier), Callistrex the Malignant (created by weird_witticism) - Beta-class psyker (Eric Wier)

Game 2 - The Traitor

Rumors suggested that an eccentric hermit and collector of various esoterica, grimoires, and curios had recently awakened as a powerful psyker. The prospect of such a psyker, and their potential application for the beacon at Ravachol, attracted the attention of several cults on their pilgrimage to the lighthouse.

Many of the hermit’s collected artifacts were strewn about the decaying landscape of an evaporated sea.

Ligeia Orr, Prophet of the Crimson Veil leads devotees of the Church of the Red Athenæum into the dry wastes in search of the hermit, an outcast known as Callistrex the Malignant.

The Church of the Red Athenæum advances cautiously, making note of any promising looking artifacts and relics, as they search for evidence of the psyker.

Before the Church of the Red Athenæum can locate Callistrex, the Beaconite Astroqabalic Survey Party (weirdingsway) deduce the psyker’s location with careful auspex scans. Meaning to take full advantage of this information, Father Simon, Servostivador Preacher, races across the sun bleached ruins, his white bulbous submersible shape in stark contrast to oxide red sands.

Opening their mind to the Empyrean, guided by their third eye, Saint Voskhodh - the Voice of the Outer Dark, locates Callistrex the Malignant and, unfolding the fabric of reality around them, translocates the psyker’s twisting form in front of the Astroqabalic Survey Party.

Not intent on relinquishing their freewill, Callistrex lashes out, fist smashing into the golden domed helmet of the Templar - Soldat of the Faith. Their visor crazed and splintering, the soldier crashes to the ground.

Sensing the danger their master is in, a burnished battle-automata initiates eradication engrams and bounds into the ruins above the Navigator coterie, firing some incendiary rounds into the beaconites.

In an unnerving mechanical spectacle, the crimson battle-automata leaps into the chaotic melee to assist Callistrex, crushing the lifeforce out of the downed Templar.

Taking advantage of the escalating combat between Callistrex the Malignant and the Astroqabalic Survey Party, the newly arrived Synod of Reclamation (brad506187) sets about collecting priceless artifacts, intent on destroying the blasphemous idols which they believe trap the Emperor's spirit.

Sensing the spore of psychic activity in the air, Saint Clement of Ravachol’s mind telepathically skims the surroundings and connects with Saint Voskhodh - the Voice of the Outer Dark. As their minds touch, Clement senses their paths will not align and his heart fills with contempt. He projects his will across the plain, manifesting as a molten wyrm, the space around him freezing as it reverberates with psychic potential. Filled with exhilaration, his astral form descends on Voskhodh, intent on incinerating their essence in a cascade of psychosomatic trauma. The instant before contact, this fervor turns to dread, as the Voice of the Outer Dark’s third eye opens and projects visages of what Clement instinctively knows to be the navigator’s ancestors, opulent and imperial, within each face another face, a recursive nightmare. All of their third eyes open in unison and he is swept into an abyssal void.

The psychic backwash of Saint Clement’s aether death caused the eyes of all those within the surrounding area to twitch, lacrimal glands parched. But Luca Marit, gene shepherd of The Church of the Third Specimen (martin.mccoy.art), felt the aftereffects of the mind war more acutely. A tremor seemed to travel down each one of his long bones. He almost lost his footing and tumbled to a painful death, but he caught himself. As if one with him, the two heads of living gene flesh on his staff began howling and writhing in distress. He set his attention back on the jade idol that had brought him up here. But the sensation remained–shivers.

Sensing the opportunity, Callistrex the Malignant uses the trauma of the psychic duel between Voskhodh and another lost soul to teleport away, hoping to escape the clutches of the Beaconites.

Emboldened by their ancestors' presence and banishing the saint of the Synod of Reclamation, Voskhodh tempts fate again and opens a gateway to the Warp, wresting Callistrex the Malignant right back to the Beaconite’s clutches.

Glut on their psychic prowess and recent triumph over the false saint of the Synod of Reclamation, Voskhodh brazenly attempts to duplicate that mental duel, this time targeting Callistrex the Malignant. And while they had easily dominated Callistrex until this point, having successfully phased them across the desolate landscape, the disheveled psyker had been cornered for the last time. A sliver of desperation and a spark of rage, all supplemented by the psychic death throes of the iconoclast saint, Callistrex projects his will into a horror from the stygian depths, gunship grey, thousands of razor teeth spiraling into infinity. The cartilaginous Helicoprion swells impossibly, its maw distending to engulf the navigator bloodline, as the infinite series of third eyes open, a fathomless void.

Too much of the Immaterium had channeled through the mortal frames of Callistrex the Malignant and Voskhodh, and in a fulminous surge, the link each psyker shares with their astral projections sever. Stretching to infinity, the beaconite primogenitors’ warp eyes roll back, each an abyss widening—until Voskhodh’s corporal form sublimates out of existence, lost in the Warp, replaced with a marble totem of the Navigator House Oberth. Callistrex’s ectoplasmic form—sleek, all fins, whirled teeth, and beady dead eyes—circles the barren plain, its olfactory rosette tuned to any trace of Warp energy…

…which it quickly finds in the scent of the nascent psyker Luca Marit, of The Church of the Third Specimen. Marit does not even realize what was happening as the apex predator of the Empyrean’s abyssal plain descends, tearing Marit’s meager Warp presence from their mortal frame. His physical body goes limp and finally makes that plunge to the sandy ground they had narrowly avoided earlier. As if finally satisfied, the ectoplasmic chondrichthyes departs and Callistrex the Malignant falls dead.

The situation is dire. Despite the scorching noon day sun, hoar frost coats everything. Saint Voskhodh is gone, vanished into the maelstrom after a kaleidoscopic surge of psychic energy. But the mission must go on, the beacon must be built, so Father Simon hoists the rigid corpse of Callistrex the Malignant onto their back and continues on to the colossal lighthouse dominating the horizon.

Game 2b: The Children of Cagoria (Witchhammerstudio), Blessed Saint Abdubel of the Crippled Penitents Procession (redwetskeleton), Our Lady of Anguish (noclearcoat)

Game 2 - The Machine

Jonny, Eli and Gage play the Machine scenario where their cults scour the exterior of a rusting behemoth of Old Night, as it shambles out from the watery depths of one of Vastarian’s oceans.

Risking their lives, the Children of Cagoria congregate at the feet of the ancient monstrosity, preparing to clamber up the gargantuan machine.

An Adamus assassin, a Child of Cagoria, gracefully scales the rust-streaked husk of the clambering Machine.

Sifting through the wreckage of civilization, the assassin’s hand finds an ash-gray book. Nethescurial.

Game 3a: Beaconite Astroqabalic Survey party (weirdingsway), Navigator House Tenebris (sovthofheaven), The Sin Eaters (pied_pewter_piper), Lux Uteri (colecifer_xxviii), The Church of the Gyro Choir (Eric Wier, models created by Nicky Grillet).

Father Simon, preacher from the Beaconite Astroqabalic Survey Party, ventures deep within detritus and discarded strata of civilizations below the streets of Ravachol in search of archeotech and long forgotten data terminals that might aid in the activation of the astropathic beacon. To his surprise, he is intercepted by a clade of Adeptus Mechanicum adepts of the Church of the Gyro Choir.

Lexico Arcanus Griev of the Church of the Gyro Choir eradicates a pair of Sin Eaters, the deranged outcome of the Red Joy escaping Hondious.

Eve, Progenitor of Sin, opens themselves to the Warp and translocates, ambushing followers of the Omnissiah. In her absence from the material plain, however, the Realm of Chaos takes hold and in a surge of Warp energy, she immolates herself in coruscating tendrils of Warpfire.

The Ox of Heaven, Aspect of the Freighter Boustrophedon, locates a glowing terminal, blinking with arcane cyphers. Before turning their attention to the screen, they pump a fresh shell into their shotgun, glinting in the alabaster flood lights.

Saint Oded, mind addled with Warp energy and blinded by what he trusts is the searing light of Great Lighthouse of Vastarian, charges Lexico Arcanus Tsuchinshan 9981600.11Z/f of the Church of the Gyro Choir, intent on silencing the dissonant, buzzing cant that surrounds the servant of the Omnissiah.

An initiate from the Navigator House Tenebris locates a cogitator bank within the labyrinthine corridors under Ravachol, with Saint Voskhodh, the Voice of the Outer Dark, at their back.

Father Simon, Beaconite preacher, opens an armored bulkhead and finds a kill-clade of Ordo Redactor agents sent by Forgeworld Phaeton, their machine carbines at the ready.

After escaping the mutagenic clutches of the Immaterium, Saint Voskhodh, the Voice of the Outer Dark, realizes they did not survive the ordeal unchanged. Even in utter silence, they hear a constant scraping, a subtle scratching along a pane of armored glass, the crunch of dead leaves on a planet long devoid of flora. These incessant noises were coalescing into an approximation of language. And it is calling them to the surface, to a chapel at the foot of the hyper-radial lighthouse in Ravachol. It is beginning.

Game 3b: The Esoteric Fellowship of Dhæ-ghan (modernsynthesist; cultists converted by 4ydra), The Order of the Luminous Dawn (the_phoenecian), The Church of the Red Athenæum (btwnbolterandme), Synod of Reclamation (brad506187), Adeptus Arbites (Greg Wier)

Game 3 - Terra Rex

The faithful of Vastarian begin to arrive in great numbers to the floodplains surrounding the great lighthouse of Ravachol. The plains shake under the footfall of colossal ambulatory shrines. What fiendish machinations conspired to breathe life into these shrines? While mysterious in origin, their purpose appeared clear enough. Drive off any visitors intent on harming the ancient lighthouse of Ravachol.

Soon the plains were awash with flames of dead and dying shrines, their iron frames no match for the combined might of the Church of the Red Athenæum and the Synod of Reclamation.

In a psychic cataclysm, Saint Clement of the Synod of Reclamation disappeared, as his flesh peeled back and what could only be described as a nightmare burst forth, a hyperorganism of plaid flesh, flailing limbs, glistening tendrils, and naked muscle fibers. Laevan the Mighty (modernsynthesist) of the Esoteric Fellowship of Dhæ-ghan, feels as though they are ascendant, hallowed might coursing through their veins. Sledgehammer be damned, he would banish this abomination. It was his divine purpose.

But the Emperor’s blessing was not upon Laevan the Mighty. His net a poor substitute for a hammer, he found himself quickly on the ground, the parched soil greedily soaking up his blood as he bled out.

Ligeia Orr, Prophet of the Crimson Veil, Dreamer of the Apocalypse confronted the hyperorganism and, with great mental strain, located a flicker of what had been Saint Clement of Ravachol in the gibbering mass of roiling flesh. Ligeia tethered this fragment of the old psyker to his discarded staff, the brazier on top still a guttering flame, and despite vehement protest from the daemonic entity, it slowly lost its grip on the mortal realm. Miraculously, the pulsing flesh and glistening muscle reformed back into the unconscious form of the Saint of the Synod of Reclamation.

Jimmy Henriksson (the_phoenecian), Adam, Brad Smith (brad506187), and Nick (@modernsynthesist) pose at the conclusion of day two of the Vastarian event.

Look forward to coverage of Day 3 of the event soon!

- Eric Wier