(Artwork by Nikita Kaputinov, https://askel.artstation.com/)

“WAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

The battle-roar of the Orks reverberated like an explosion through the treeline, the guttural sonic force of it momentarily drowning out the backdrop of gunfire and explosions in the surrounding jungle. Hector Torrez, Deathwatch Veteran and battle-brother of the Crimson Fists, knew what that sound meant: a lot of Orks were charging towards his position, and he only had a few seconds to react before they were on him.

In those scant few seconds, his training took over. His auspex indicated that the other members of his kill team were spread throughout the area, supporting various PDF squads in this section of the jungle, preparing for an attack from multiple directions. Around him, one such PDF squad was hastily manning positions in their dugout, hefting lasrifles, making preparations, and mouthing quick prayers to the Emperor. He tried to ignore the way they looked up at him with reverence, or the way they did the sign of the Aquila when they did so. They were scratch mortal troops, unused to war, barely with half the training of the Astra Militarum…and yet, for now, they were the only support he was going to get against the coming horde. He could hear dozens of footfalls pounding through the treeline already. And that battlecry…it kept echoing across the landscape, like something primal and angry from the onset of history.

“Fire when I do,” he told the PDF troopers as he slotted a fresh belt into the slot of his modified heavy bolter, the Rake. “Wait until they are out of the treeline. If you can, try to concentrate your fire on one Ork at a time– these beasts take a lot to bring down with lasguns.” He remembered that all too well, from when he was a mortal.

And then the Orks were on them.

Hector had fought Orks across dozens of warzones since Rynn’s World, and he had committed their brutish forms to memory: huge, powerfully muscles arms easily capable of ripping a man in half. Tusk-jawed, small-eyed heads that were sunk onto slab-like torsos capable of shrugging off small arms like an annoyance. Filthy, ragged clothing, and an array of rusted cleavers, axes, chain-blades and junkyard guns that in any other hands would have been laughable, but in theirs were brutally efficient. On they came, in a frenzied, loping run red eyes glinting with battle-lust, shouting that infernal warcry of theirs so that the whole world might hear it.

Hector cut their roar short as he pulled the trigger.

The Rake roared to life, its muzzle almost disappearing under an arm-length flare as he felt the weapon kick angrily in his grip. The first three Orks at the front of the horde simply ceased to exist, as the explosive rounds blasted apart their torsos, blew out their legs, pulped their heads. Hector noted, with grim satisfaction, as a fourth Ork was also hit, a shell whistled through its disintegrating comrade at the front and slammed into its shoulder. Not enough to drop it…not immediately. That quickly changed, however, as the hellfire round ignited, and the Ork went from a roaring green barbarian to a phosphorescent torch, screaming and flailing as it ran to and fro ablaze.

And still they came.

Twenty metres.

Centuries of fire discipline took over, and Hector held his ground, calmly sawing his heavy bolter left and right, the streams of mass reactives tearing into the oncoming Ork mob with hungry abandon. More of the green-pigs soon joined their fellows in death as they were set ablaze, shredded, blasted into meaty chunks; only their sheer battle-lust kept them charging towards Hector’s position, running straight into the buzzsaw of his relentless fire to get to grips with him.

Fifteen metres.

He was vaguely aware of the desperate PDF troopers snapping off lasfire shots on either side of him. Most of the shots went wide, hissing laser blasts slashing through the undergrowth: the PDF’s lack of training was painfully evident. A few hit their mark, and Hector noted one las shot that buried itself in an Ork’s eye socket and blew out the back of its cranium in a small explosion of hissing grey matter. A PDF trooper whooped as he claimed the kill.

Ten metres.

Then the whizzing hail of bullets came in as the Orks hastily fired on the move, crude pistols, junk-heap machine guns and blunt-ended sluggers returning fire in a wheezing hail of bullets. Most of the shots went wide: the Orks fired not only to kill, but also for the sheer love of the noisome discharge that their weapons made. What few shots went Hector’s way pattered off his ceramite plate. What few shots went into the PDF troopers struck home, dropping them soundlessly.

A quick mental calculation told Hector that there had to be perhaps twenty Orks in this mob. Knowing the Greenskins, there would be even more stomping up in their wake. In a matter of minutes he would be overwhelmed, no matter how many he killed.

Five metres.

He could practically smell the charnel-house reek of their breath at this point, they were that close.

His ammo counter told him he had already gone through half of his current clip.

His kill counter showed twelve dead Orks. More than half the mob. But he could also see another mob rushing onwards in their wake, merging with the foremost mob as they rushed up to join their fellow Greenskins.

It was now or never.

“FALL BACK!” he roared to the PDF troopers, the vox-grille of his helmet amplifying his voice so it was louder than the Greenskins’ bellowing. “Get to secondary positions, like you practiced! MOVE!”

Some brothers of the Deathwatch might have been content to let the PDF maintain their position, to use them as bait to create a perfect kill-zone, to trade their lives for xenos deaths. Hector was not such an Astartes.

The remaining PDF troopers did not need to be yelled at twice by one of the Emperor’s Angels. They hurried out of their dugouts, rushing past Torrez as they ran to the secondary line a few metres behind. Hector maintained his position, continuing to saw the Rake back and forth, pulverizing, disintegrating and immolating the Orks as they closed on his position. Then he started to step back as he fired, slowly giving ground: the distance between him and the Orks closed rapidly…

…and then, as the first few Orks tumbled into the dugouts, nearly an arm’s length away from him, Hector pressed the detonator mag-locked to his hip.

Everything in front of Hector disappeared into a cloud of churned-up earth as the clusters of frag grenades, mines, and spare mortar shells that the PDF had collected, jury-rigged and hidden under old blankets detonated. Behind Hector, the PDF cheered as their trap worked: granite, clumps of earth and fragments of Orkoid guts went flying in all directions, much of it spattering against Hector’s battle plate. He stood stoically as the remains of the dugout rained against him, drenching him in earth and filth; past the deluge, his auto-senses saw well enough through the expanding explosion to see just how much damage had been done.

“It’s not over,” Hector told the celebrating PDF. “We didn’t get them all.”

And then, a second later, he was proven right as several burnt, bloodied Orks came charging through the cloud of debris right into him.

Hector exploded into movement, barreling into the foremost Ork before it could swing its rusted cleaver down, and swinging the Rake upwards, slamming its muzzle against the thing’s bellowing jaw with a sickening crunch of shattering teeth. He depressed the trigger for a half-second, just enough for the Ork’s head to disappear in a green mist, before he spun to face the next charging Ork. He brought up an armoured forearm to block and turn aside a descending axe-blade, and kicked out, hammering the Greenskin in the kneecap to unbalance it; he then spun just as a buzzing chain-cleaver bit into his pauldron in a shower of sparks. His combat knife came free of its scabbard in a fluid motion, and he buried it up to the hilt into the Greenskin’s skull: it went cross-eyed and then fell like a struck tree.

All of the discipline that had been holding back his anger began to melt away in that instant. He had almost forgotten how noisome the Orks were. How much devastation they had brought to Rynn’s World when he was just a boy. How many of his chapter had died trying to stop their onslaught. How much he could hate anything as much as he hated them.

But above all, he had almost forgotten how good it felt to kill these bastards.

“Die, Ork filth!” came a snarl of such hatred from his vox-grille that he almost didn’t recognize it as his own.

He wrenched the knife free, barely fast enough to block a descending axe that would have cleaved between his helmet. Not fast enough to block a spiked maul that bit hard into his right arm, punching right through ceramite to bite into the flesh beneath. He dropped the Rake entirely, and pulled out his bolt pistol, gunning down the Ork in front of him. They were swarming him now, another axe wedging itself deeply into his pauldron, biting into the meat of his shoulder. A gnarled green fist came whistling in from out of nowhere, ringing his helmet like a bell and cracking one of his eye-lenses. He hissed in pain, as his vision threatened to be overwhelmed by a sea of laughing, roaring green faces…

Then one of the Orks on his right fell, concentrated las-fire evaporating its thick skull. The PDF remembered what I told them, Hector thought; to his left there was a whirling blue glow, and then another Ork that had been trying to chop him down was relieved of its head. The Ork spun around, its fallen head still roaring as its body raised its weapons in challenge: a second later, though, the body toppled uselessly into the dirt and the head fell silent, as both realized they were dead.

Another Astartes giant came into view, his black power armour a mirror of Hector’s own.

“Always needing to be saved by me at the last minute, eh Hector?” Brother Mafaro quipped as he swung his power sword lazily to the size, flicking sizzling alien blood off of it.

Beneath his helmet, Hector flashed the Blackshield a wry smile as he breathed through gritted teeth. “Someone here has to make you look good Mafaro,” he quipped back. “You certainly don’t do that well enough on your own!”

“Less jesting, more killing, brothers!” another voice shouted on the vox; with a roar of jet exhaust, another Astartes came descending like a black meteor, his jump pack sending him plummeting into another trio of Orks that had been rushing from the front, knocking them down like bowling pins. Brother Hywel’s chainsword buzzed angrily to life, dispatching the downed Orks in quick succession: the Dark Angel, as always, made up for in ruthless efficiency what he lacked in banter.

The rest of Kill Team Stiletto, having dealt with the Orks in their own respective sectors, were rushing into the fray as well: Brother Raelyn strode into view, the Librarian shouting an invocation to the Great Angel as he extended his hand and unleashed a crackling storm of psy-lightning that flensed Orks it touched to atoms. Brother Zebreth came into view as well, the Techmarine methodically snapping off shots with his bolter as he shot Orks down with clinical precision. In the midst of this butchery, the lasfire from their rear momentarily ceased, as the PDF stood agape at the wonderous spectacle of the Deathwatch utterly murdering the Greenskins in close quarters.

And then, finally, it was over. The green tide had been reduced to a dense carpet of tangled, mutilated limbs and burnt, blasted husks. What few Orks remained from that surge finally had an outbreak of common sense and retreated, baying and yelping, back into the cover of the foliage. Hector fought the urge to chase after them, to stamp them down, to break them utterly, set fire to their bodies so they would no longer pollute this world with their spoor…

“Easy, brother.” Raelyn placed a hand on his shoulder, the Lamenter adopting a calm tone. Hector only then realized that he had been quivering in rage. “It’s over. Control your humors.”

Hector exhaled, and nodded. Behind them, the PDF were cheering. Let them be jubilant, he told himself: they had survived. This time.

Zebreth made his way towards Hector. “Brother Torrez,” he said, “I suggest you attend to your weapon, before you displease its machine spirit.” He gestured to Hector’s heavy bolter, which had been dropped in the midst of the melee. “Unless,” the Techmarine added wryly, “you want your weapon to jam on you in the next firefight.”

Hector chuckled at the Iron Hand. “Believe me, the Rake has gotten far dirtier than this,” he said, reaching down to heft the fallen gun back up, “but I thank you for your concern, brother.”

“So, do you think it worked?” Mafaro spoke up, wrenching his power sword free from an Ork that it had been lodged in. “Do you think we got their leader’s attention?” That had been the whole point of this operation: to position with local PDF units in a jungle clearing, in order to draw the leader of this Ork incursion into a kill zone.

As if on cue, something immense roared in the distance.

Hector spun in the direction of the noise. The auto-senses of his helm picked up something massive in the distance– something that was knocking down trees in its path. He zoomed in, and made out the distinct outline of a massive, scaled quadruped, its face a drooling cavern of serrated jaws and a gigantic, lolling tongue. A squiggoth, Hector knew from experience. A crude howdah had been erected upon its back, and sitting on a makeshift throne, an immense Ork roared commands as it waved an axe twice the size of a human being.

“Does that answer your question?” Hector muttered as he fed a new belt into the Rake.

*********

Name: Hector Torrez

Chapter: Crimson Fists

Demeanor: Gregarious; Favoured of the Deathwatch

Past: Survivor of Rynn’s World; first of new generation of Marines

Specialism: Devastator

STATS:

Weapon Skill 40
Ballistic Skill 50
Strength 40
Toughness 40
Agility 40
Intelligence 40
Perception 40
Willpower 50
Renown 20

Fate Points: 4
Wounds: 22

Chapter Solo Mode: Ork Slayer

Chapter Squad Mode: Dedicated Kill Team/Last Stand

TALENTS AND TRAITS:

Ambidextrous- Use either hand equally well—reduce penalties for two weapons.  [Only War 140]
Bulging Biceps- Remove bracing requirement for certain weapons. [Only War 141]
Heightened Senses (Hearing, Sight)- Gain +10 bonus to particular sense.
Killing Strike- May spend a fate point to make melee attacks unavoidable. [Only War 146]
Nerves of Steel- Reroll Pinning Tests. [Only War 149]
Quick Draw- Draw weapon as Free Action. [Only War 150]
Resistance (Psychic Powers)
True Grit- reduces critical damage taken
Unarmed Warrior- Improves unarmed attacks. [Only War 153]
Deathwatch Training- Space Marines roll 2d5 and drop the lowest for Righteous Fury against Xenos Enemies and vehicles. [Deathwatch 115]
Unnatural Strength and Toughness [4]
Hunter of Aliens (Orks)- Gain additional +10 WS and +2 Damage against Orks
Mighty Shot- Increase rate of fire by any bolter weapon by 1 on semi-auto/full auto mode
Bolter Drill- Increase rate of fire by any bolter weapon by 1 on semi-auto/full auto mode
Bolt Weapon Expertise- When clearing a gun jam, can reload as a free action and only lose single round from weapon instead of whole magazine
Unrelenting Devastation- When firing a heavy weapon, inflict 1 extra point of damage to a horde’s magnitude for every hit; if using a weapon with Blast, instead inflict extra 1d5 points for damage to horde’s magnitude. Only works in squad mode.

ASTARTES IMPLANTS:

Secondary Implants- You gain the Unnatural Strength and Toughness Traits.
Larraman’s Organ- You do not suffer from Blood Loss.
Catalepsean Node- You suffer no penalties to Perception-based Tests when awake for long periods of time.
Preomnor- You gain +20 to Toughness Tests against ingested poisons.
Omophagea- You may gain a Skill or Skill Group by devouring a portion of an enemy.
Multi-Lung- You may re-roll any failed Toughness Test for drowning or asphyxiation. In addition, you gain a +30 to Toughness Tests made to resist gases, and may re-roll failed results.
Occulube and Lyman’s Ear- You gain the Heightened Senses (Sight and Hearing) Talents, +10 to relevant Awareness Tests.
Sus-an Membrane- You may enter suspended animation.
Oolotic Kidney- You may re-roll any failed Toughness Test ro resist poisons and toxins, including attacks with the Toxic Quality.
Neuroglottis- You may detect any poison or toxin by taste with a successful Awareness Test. You gain a +10 to Tracking Tests against a target you have tasted.
Mucranoid- You may re-roll any failed Toughness Tests caused by temperature extremes.
Betcher’s Gland- You may spit acid as a ranged weapon with the following profile: Range 3m; Damage 1d5; Pen 4; Toxic. If you hit your target by 3 or more degrees of success, you have blinded him for 1d5 Rounds.
Progenoids- These may be retrieved with a successful Medicae Test.
Black Carapace- While wearing Power Armour, enemies do not gain a bonus to hit you due to your size.

EQUIPMENT:

Power Armour- Body 10, arms, legs, and helmet 8

Bolter (Godwyn)
Class: Basic
Damage 1d10+9x, Penetration 4, Range 100m Rate of Fire S/3/-, Clip Size 28 Reload Full
Special Rules: Tearing, Special

Bolt pistol
Class: Pistol
Damage 1d10+9 x, Penetration 4, Range 30m Rate of Fire S/2/-, Clip Size 14 Reload Full
Special Rules: Tearing

Combat Knife
Class: Melee
Damage 1d10+0 R Penetration 2

Frag Grenades
Class: Thrown
Damage 2d10+2 X Penetration 0 Range SBx3 Rate of Fire S/-/-
Special Rules: Blast (4)

Krak Grenade
Class: Thrown
Damage 3d10+4 X Penetration 6 Range SBx3 Rate of Fire S/-/-
Special Rules: Concussive (0)

Heavy bolter
Class: Heavy bolter
Damage 2d10+10 X Penetration 6 Range 150m Rate of Fire 0/0/10 Clip Size 60 Reload Full
Special Rules: Tearing

Stun Grenades
Class: Thrown
Damage n/a Penetration 0 Range SBx3 Rate of Fire S/-/- Clip Size 3 Reload
Special Rules: Blast (5), Concussive (2)

Backpack ammo supply: Uses back slot, can be used with heavy weapon
2 repair cement Restore seal on armour that has been penetrated
Ork bone talismans- Use Hatred in both WS and BS; Orks hate you
Standard bolter ammo
Frag and krak grenades
2 magazines of Kraken rounds

BIOGRAPHY:

Hector Torrez was just a boy when the Orks came to his home planet of Rynn’s World. Like so many boys of his generation, he remembers the horror of the months that followed– of the Crimson Fists’ fabled monastery of Mount Hellblade detonating in apocalyptic fire, of the frantic race of hundreds of thousands of refugees to New Rynn City and the brutal siege that followed. He remembers the blood, the death, the horror, and the terror of those months, and how he lost his entire family to the rampaging greenskin mobs. Through all of that, he survived, he endured, and came out of the ordeal a young man bearing the scars of war a bitter hatred for the xenos. In the aftermath of the Rynn’s World Campaign, Torrez was one of the first new inductees into the Crimson Fists as they sought to rebuild their shattered chapter, and in the centuries since, Battle-Brother Hector Torrez would serve with courage and distinction, and his experience would even lead to him being seconded to the Deathwatch, to lend his experience in culling the xenos to the aid of the Inquisition. But even after all of these long centuries, Torrez has never forgotten or forgiven what happened to Rynn’s World, and itches for vengeance against the hated Greenskins at every opportunity…

*****

So in the fall of last year, some friends invited me to participate in a Deathwatch campaign; as I had just finished DMing a (somewhat haphazard) Rogue Trader campaign (more on that in a possible future article), I was happy to be a player for a change, and more than a little curious to see how another DM handled Fantasy Flight’s rather crunchy rules sets. As it turned out, the DM had done more than a little fine tuning, combining the rules of Deathwatch with a lot of the rules and options available in Only War, to create his own rather unique blended rule set that he, unsurprisingly, dubbed “Only Astartes.” At character creation, we were encouraged to go for any Chapter we wanted: I knew, right from the outset, that I wanted to make a Crimson Fist.

Way back when I was an awkward teenager (as opposed to an awkward adult), I first got into 40k at around the start of 3rd edition. Because they were one of the two armies that came in the starter box at the time, my first army was Space Marines, and, inspired by both a very nice blue colour scheme and some amazing codex cover art, I selected the Crimson Fists as my chapter. When I started to read more of the lore on these boys in blue (and red), I felt vindicated by the tales of grim determination and selfless heroism in the face of overwhelming odds and unspeakable tragedy. I will leave it to the more noteworthy lore experts like The Remembrancer, Mr Bones 40K and KrakDuk to outline why the Crimson Fists are awesome. The TL:DR, though: even when their homeworld was being invaded by Orks, and even after a malfunctioning missile blew up their fortress monastery and killed nearly 90% of their Chapter, the Crimson Fists didn’t give in to despair. Instead of fighting a pointless last stand like any other chapter would have, they fought an intelligent guerilla war, hurt the Orks where we could, and even though massively outnumbered, grimly held on until reinforcements arrived. Theirs is a tale of tenacity, quick thinking and unbreakable resolve absolutely worthy of the Adeptus Astartes.

Oh, and also the fact that one of their missiles blew up their own base makes me all the more empathetic towards them, what with my own terrible dice luck.

In making my character, I decided he was originally a mere boy on Rynn’s World (the Fists’ homeworld) who had to endure the sheer horror of the Ork invasion and probably lost friends and family to the rampaging Greenskins. Such a boy would have made an ideal recruit for the Fists in their efforts to rebuild their devastated Chapter, and, cut to a few centuries later during the Era Indomitus, Hector Torrez would grow to a veteran of the Chapter with a lot of suppressed trauma and (of course) an overwhelming hatred of Orks. In deciding on my character class, I was initially torn between the Tactical Marine (which apparently is a jack-of-all-trades inspiration character for a Deathwatch squad) and a Devastator (a guy with a big gun); in the end, of course, the big gun won out. Maybe its because I felt the squad could use more firepower, maybe it was because I felt uncomfortable, initially, about being thrust into a leadership role, or maybe the beautiful simplicity of firing a hundred rounds per minute appealed to something primordial in my brain.

Thus far, the Deathwatch campaign has been incredibly fun, and Hector has gotten to fight Kroot, Tyranids, the hated Orks, slightly more Tyranids, and even briefly got to fight alongside tiny aliens in toy-sized mech suits (the team agreed that these aliens were a little too small to merit extermination). I may recap some of the more interesting moments from the campaign later, but for now, I can safely say that if I ever return to a Fantasy Flight system (and I just might), this campaign as given me a lot of inspiration on how to run it, and what I could possibly change from how I ran the Rogue Trader campaign. Until that day comes, though, Hector will be happily blazing away at anything his team permits him to.

Next: Shadowrun