Wait! It's dangerous out there, take two!

Hit up all the buttons on the panel. On the ground, Karitoss requisitions climbing gear.

A delicate manipulation implement comes forth from the skull's mouth. The servo skull hovers inches away from the wall and begins pressing each button. The buttons are arranged in a 6 by 2 array and the servo skull presses the bottom right button, the bottom left, the next lowest right button, and so on. After each press the elevator stirs to life for a brief moment but just as quickly returns to dormant sleep the way ancient machine spirits often do.

On the ground, Karitoss retrieves climbing gear from the Fortuna.

Desilco waits and kicks some pebbles thinking to himself about two things: how nice it is to be rich and how much quieter it is without a particular greenskin around. He then comes to the conclusion that he likes having a clean ship and makes a note to himself to never bring another ork on board again... ever

Desilco's mind is overwhelmed with such joy at the thought of being ork free that the stuff of reality itself coalesces around his soul preventing the next 1 corruption he would acquire.

Truly the Emperor protects. Realizing that daydreaming doesn't fit a Lord-Captain so well Desilco walks over to Karitoss and says.

"My good Explorator, has your servo skull happened upon anything to indicate danger or should we proceed with sending in the men. I am quite eager to see what's inside this peculiar structure after what feels like months having passed by. Strange isn't it?"

"Yes, it's very strange," Karitoss replies. "It could be one of this maelstrom's side effects, or maybe it's something completely different like an axe or a spear. Anyway, the building's perfectly safe. Let's venture inside."

Removing his power sword from its sheath, but taking care not to activate the powerful energy field capable of coating the blade so as not to alarm the locals, Desilco turns to the men and says with great excitement to finally get under way

"You heard the man! Let's see what's inside and what we can find! Do not harm or otherwise damage any of the machinery inside lest we lose valuable information." With that he leads the men inside eager for adventure and excitement

The crewmen descend to the tower and find the front doors locked. They try breaching the door with a portable ram but are still unable to open the doors. Without worry or frustration the crew members produce a grappling hook and knotted rope. One of the burlier of the bunch spends 10 minutes tossing the grappling hook at the lowest open window (10 meters up) before managing to secure the line. One woman ascends the tower from the outside alone. Upon reaching the top she vanishes into the tower and a moment later returns to the window to holler out "All clear!". With the green light all but two of the crew clamber up the rope into the tower. After ensuring that the tower entrance is safe, Desilco and his advisers also ascend into the tower.

Inside the first room Desilco and the others find themselves inside an office of some sort. An honest to emperor wooden desk and chair sit rotting near the window. The two items are so worn down by time that none of the finished details remain. On the surface of the desk is a flat and dry residue and black stains. Beside the furniture is a thoroughly rusted metal object laden with rows of progressively more elevated buttons and a bizarre arrangement of thin plastic rods behind the rows of buttons. Across from the desk and chair is an open doorway through which you can spy crewmen exploring the hallway. On both sides of the door stand metal bookcases. Each shelf of these bookcases is completely filled with a dry jagged multicolor block. As you head towards the hall and glance back at the window you notice that the black stains are present in line traced from the floor, up the desk hutch and onto the top of the window frame.

The crew initially canvases the tower for threats. In the process they manage to access the floor below and eight floors above.

On floors 2 (the one below you), 3, 4 and 5 the search party find nearly all the rooms filled with ancient and apparently dead cogitators. Offices are in the same block on each of these floors and three data slates are retrieved from the 32 searched office rooms. The search party found the elevator shaft previously discovered by Karitoss' servo skull and even manage to pry open the elevator shaft but have yet to climb or descend tower through here because of a mess of sparking cords dangling all throughout the shaft.

Floors 6, 7 and 8 prove more immediately interesting. Each floor has a somewhat circular main hallway and share a central room. On the sides of this room are glass paneled walls separating spectator and cogitator rooms from a monolithic black metal pillar in the center. Tubes and sprawl out of the pillar at it's base and six metal rings with approximately 20 foot radii are held to the pillar with joining rods. The crew reported that if they stood extremely close to the artifact they could hear a low pitch hum inside and thought they observed something rotating beneath the mess of tubes feeding into the base of the pillar.

Floors 9, 10 and 11 all possess circular hallways as well. However, massive military grade gates on each of these floors prevents access to the space inside the circle.

Stairs to floors 1 and 12 are cutoff by massive piles of machinery melted together and into the walls of the passageways.

Desilco, a little upset he wasn't leading the men in the search and instead had to stay back but nonetheless still excited to see what's inside, instantly gains a curiosity for the strange monolith and goes to see it for himself. Along the way he tells one of the higher ranking officers to see about gaining access to the upper floors and to have some of the men do a thorough search for more data slates.

Upon reaching the monolith Desilco adopts an inquisitive attitude once he sees the strange setup and immediately sees if his experience with Xenos could give any indication as to the nature of the device (cough cough forbidden lore Xenos, someone roll for me cause I cant)

Desilco sets his brightest to the task of awakening the data slates from their deathly slumbers while he moves to the monolith room to judge the "strange device" himself.

He takes the stairs up to the 6th floor and follows the curved hallway until he reaches the opened gateway connecting this hall to the central one. The first thing Desilco notices as he enters is the room is the dimming of his flashlight. In fact, all of the flashlights used by the crew in this room look dim. The second thing he notices is the pillar. Forty feet into the room a vicious mess of tubes spurt from channels in the floor and are drawn up into the pillar. After carefully stepping up to the pillar Desilco can hear the low pitch hum previously mentioned and see something whirring beneath a sheathe of cords wires and tubes.

Desilco despite his best efforts and attempted use of fate is befuddled by the strange device" and the nature of it. He finds the effect on his electronic light to be peculiar and uses a lighter to see if it has any effect on its light.

With a small spark fire is born. The curious rogue trader holds out his luxury lighter and observes that it too is dimmer than it ought to be.

Desilco watches the flame dim with probably an unhealthy amount of happiness before putting it away. He then takes is vox communicator and before using it lights up an Iho stick and takes a drag to calm his nerves.

"Explorator if you would please come to the sixth floor to examine a object of great peculiarity that I believe will peak your interest" pauses for another drag before speaking again "feel free to order the men to move anything you need or bring you anything you would otherwise require for the job. I believe we may have found something related to the maelstrom"

"Already here," Karitoss replies as he glides into the room. "Hmm, very curious." He examines the pillar for anything recognizable. [Forbidden Lore, Archeotech]

The nano-carbine wires, the type IV empyreal transit links, the attention to polish on the supporting machina-skeleton supports, it all hearkens back to an era long forgotten by the teeming quintillions of the Imperium. But Karitoss knows, for he has sent his mind on journeys into the ancient and sacred data vaults on Mixos of Calixis and glimpsed records of such machinations. The artifact in front of him is an unclassified and sacrilegious archeo-xenotech hybrid. Its dark purposes are a mystery but Karitoss suspects it is connected to the swirling black shroud surrounding the planet.

"By the Emperor, what a magnificent device!" Karitoss exclaims. "The dimming of your lights may be due to its ability to siphon energy from nearby devices. What's the largest power source we have that can be brought up here?"

Previously quite bored watching the uneventful exploration unfold, Tristan suddenly becomes pale at the mention of a power source. By the Emperor, don't let them touch Fortuna. Don't touch Fortuna, don't touch Fortuna...

"Why I do believe the largest device we have would be the Fortuna is it not? I'm not so sure how much our good pilot would like the idea but I'm sure he could be convinced. I myself am not convinced that it simply siphons energy away from machines as it caused the dimming of my lighter as I ignited the flame. In any case do you think it would be safe to study such a device or should we cut our losses and destroy it?"

"Destroy it? What a preposterous idea! Why, with something like this we can conceal a whole fleet of ships from scrying eyes. The possible applications merits further study. But the Fortuna can wait. I must gain access to the top floor."

A crewman reports to the group via vox caster.

"Lord-Captain, we have accessed the ground floor of the building and discovered that the elevator shaft goes beneath ground sir."

Desilco takes his box to his ear and says "Underground you say? Get ten men together at the elevator entrance, I'll be joining you in the investigation."

He then returns to speaking to Karitoss "If my expert Explorator believes the device to be of great worth than study it we shall. Get whatever supplies you need together and begin diagnostics. I will investigate the underground portion along with some men."

Desilco storms off in a hurry and eager to see what this structure could be hiding within its depths. He finds Tristin and Joachim and approaches them.

"Mr Sky and Choir-Master Higs, would either of you care to join me in investigating the underground areas of this complex? It will surely be more entertaining and worthwhile than sitting around."

Tristan takes the bolt pistol out of the holster at his hip and cracks a smile. *chck chck* "Aye aye Lord-captain! Let's get this party started."

Desilco and Tristan descend to the first floor with a building sense of excitement. They circle down the same harsh rusted metal stairway and see that the crewmen have successfully burrowed a tunnel through weak points of the melted cogitator walls. They come down into a large reception room. More rusted desks waste away towards the back of large rectangular room one third the size of the entire level. Flashlights illuminate the walls opposite the Lord-Captain and his trusted Voidmaster and reveal gross amounts of paint depicting crude mysterious symbols. Unlike everything else here the paint looks old but not ancient.

The pair follow crewmen to a maintenance shaft towards the back fringe of the tower and per the Lord-Captain's desire for adventure wait for him to explore the depths first. The ladder itself is riddled with small invisible (in the literal sense) shards. Even though the captain is donning his gloves he is bleeding in several small spots on his hands by the time he has finished climbing down.

At the bottom he points his flashlight down the passage and sees halls comprised of dusty pipes and valves. Small physical and digital gauges sprout out of the walls like flowers and most without labels. One in particular has two words written in high gothic "Liberus Redux". The words likely have no meaning to one not versed in the ways of the machine. Before saying anything to the others Desilco takes another step forward into a T junction and shines his flashlight down both halls to see only more twists, turns, pipes and gauges. By this time Tristan has also reached this basement floor, with a similar series of bleeding spots on his hands.

"Damn straight I go first. What kind of leader would send his men where he dare not go himself?" Desilco thinks to himself after a strange voice in the sky makes jokes about him.

So eager to see what new things could await down below Desilco barely notices his bleeding hands and turns to Tristan who has now reached the bottom as well.

"It's a shame Higgs could not join us. I always feel bad for the man given how strenuous his work is. It's truly a shame that his powers will be the cause of his short lifespan; I really must make sure I see about getting him more comfortable arrangements" Desilco then returns to the matter at hand. "There are two passages ahead. We're not pressed for time but I would like to find out what is down here with haste so we can either all move as a group or split up. What say you Mr Sky"

Karitoss examines the outside of the building, determining if the climbing gear can get him up and through the top floor's window.

Karitoss is disappointed to see that the crewmen have only brought one grappling hook and massive length of rope with them. With the footing provided by the windowsill it would require the inspiration of the omnissiah to toss and secure the hook to the top window.

Tristan admires the winding halls with a sense of nostalgia. "If this place is anything like the forge world I came from, either way could have us plodding along through half the bloody planet. With the maelstrom still alive and kicking, I don't want to bet on our communications holding up if we separate. Just be careful when you march into a booby trap, you don't get us both killed." He flashes a friendly wink at his lord-captain.

"Then together we shall march. We will keep everyone to pairs and put a two meter spacing between each pair as we move. That should sufficiently negate the chance of us all at once being wiped out by a trap." The last line he says with a casual laugh. "We can't let Karitoss have all the glory in discoveries however so let's get to work"

Joachim Hig, who had been silently standing by, watching Karitoss attempt to make his way into the top floor, finally speaks up.

"Lord Engiseer, perhaps we may break through the roof of this floor for an easier ascension."

Drawing his weapon, Higgs fires a few shots at the roof far away from the mysterious contraption, and from people, to test the durability of the material.

Stubber rounds crack through the air and dig into the ceiling of the room but achieve no greater effect. The sound of gunfire echoes through the halls and a vox communication from crewmen down below comes on immediately. "Status report! Are there hostiles in your vicinity? over."

"Choirmaster speaking, we are just testing the strength of the roof material with weapon fire. It seems that it is not all that durable. Maybe we can break through the floor of the 12th floor with some heavy weaponry, or digging equipment. Anyone who is equipped with heavy weapons, please come up to the 11th floor."

"Affirmative on the no hostiles sir. No heavy weapons or digging equipment have been deployed to the field sir, over."

"Lord Captain, could you please authorize the deployment of a heavy weapons team to the field? We will probably need them to navigate this decrepit place."

Going to assume we're not too far down yet for that

"Choir-Master Higgs, how good to hear you so eager to get to work searching the upper floors. You have my permission to requisition whatever you may need to gain access from the ship. Just be careful you don't bring the whole structure down"

Desilco then sets about organizing the guards into pairs and instructs spacing of two meters between pairs. He and Tristan then begin to move down underground going to the right at the fork in the tunnel

Joachim tries to call to the Equinox but gets no response, in fact, not even a signal.

[Tristan Sky and Desilco should each make two skill checks they deem relevant to exploring the foreboding darkness beneath the tower.]

Tristan and Desilco venture further into the depths unaware of the true secrets hidden in these eon old halls. After five minutes of wandering together they come to the edge of a large cylindrical room going down further than they can see with their puny flashlights. 10 meters across this abyss is a similar passageway.

"Perfect. Champions of the human kin are tenacious and fetch an acceptable sum."

The two spin around and behold a tall and slender humanoid form. Its skin is ashen grey and their hair drops down behind them in a massive puff of neon green. Their black hide armor and alien weapon make them easy to recognize. Dark Eldar. Before anyone has time to react a pair of sinister green runes glow in the dark behind the Dark Eldar.

Igniting his power sword Desilco brandishes his blade in a defensive posture and moves to put himself between Tristan and the Xenos. He then speaks in a proud tone unflinching before the vile creature before him

"Eldar, if you think us easy prey you will be sorely mistaken. Know that you speak to the Rogue Trader Valarious Desilco and to attack me means to declare war against a powerful family of the Imperium of Man!"

(What about the ten men we brought and is there just one dark eldar?)

Petrified, Tristan exchanges a cautious glance with the Lord-Captain, as if to say, If you stab it, I'll shoot it...

[Roll Initiative]

Desilco spends a fate point for an auto ten on initiative roll (I think that's a thing in this game)

All three enemy dark eldar spring into action before the party can react. Two blade wielding Eldar leap from the shadows and slash at Desilco and Tristan. Even with an endless abyss behind them the human pair deftly avoids the mortal blows aimed at them. Behind the pair of fiendish foes their leader takes aim with a strange gun and fires into the melee. A melta packet zips through the air and comes straight towards Desilco but in a moment of oblivion one of the dark eldar engaged in melee steps in front of the shot and bursts into flames. In a split second there is only a puddle of molten slag where the enemy once stood.

Seemingly out from the abyss a lithe figure springs forth. She floats effortlessly, her body spinning in midair until, with a grace unmatched by humans, she swirls to a stop. Her spin ends as she lashes out with a massive greatsword, formed of shimmering crystals and larger than she is. Her blade flashes through the air, and blood spurts into the air. Although the ominous helmet she wears covers her expressions, you can see her body tense in the anticipation of pain that is yet to be dealt.

Desilco rather upset that some filthy dark eldars dusty corpse just sprayed onto him, takes aim with his plasma pistol at the bastard who did it, shoots at the weapons maximum power, and yells "Suffer not a xenos to dirty your clean garb!!!"

Bewildered at the sudden developments, Tristan's instincts take over and he finds himself taking aim with the bolt pistol already in his hands. He eyes a pipe protruding form the winding hallway just above the Dark Eldar attacking his Lord-Captain. He starts to plan a clever manoeuvre involving bursting the pipe to stun the assailants, but his body is far ahead of his thoughts. Tristan mechanically pulls the trigger, exploding the Dark Eldar's head just next to him.

Having no way to actually reach the ceiling, Joachim changes his plan, and starts slashing at the barricade that is blocking the entrance to the 12th floor staircase.

Having landed without a single drop of blood touching her, Lae'orenar turns around. She faces Desilco and Tristan Sky, standing 6' 5" in her strange armor (which almost seems to float of its own accord) and speaks in a haunting and disturbing voice.

"I thank you for your aid in defeating these headhunters. You have proven yourselves more capable than I usually think of humans."

Joachim damages his weapon in the process of slashing at melded cogitators and fails to make any significant progress.

Not dropping his guard in the slightest bit but willing to buy time for his plasma pistol to recharge Desilco speaks up

"More damn Eldar huh? I don't particularly care what you think of me but luckily for you I'm not like most brainwashed imperial citizens. I know you're not like the rest of these honor-less dogs so what is it that you want Eldar?"

Just as quickly as his target falls, Tristan swings his pistol towards the remaining Eldar. He eyes the Lord-Captain again. I'm not putting this down unless you give the OK.

Lae'orenar removes her helmet smoothly, shaking her long fluorescent black hair free of her armor. The hair is amazingly long, and you wonder how so much hair was able to fit beneath such thin plates. She smiles, and what should be a beautiful face is marred by the inch long canines that sprout from her gums.

"What is it I want? Why, what is it that any sentient species in this charming galaxy want? I simply want entertainment, and enough peace to enjoy my own interests." In a stunning movement, she bends completely at the waist and drags her finger in the pool of blood left from the sword. "A little bit of blood here and there doesn't hurt." She sucks the blood off her finger and glides towards Desilco. Looking down at him, she says, "You interest me, little Captain of Men. I would join your ship and your crew and live amongst you for a time."