Well, here’s what I wrote for GW – I used options 3 and 3 from the tests. I’m thinking about resurrecting the others for the next try. I’ll read the feed back over the weekend and see what I’m able to do.
Test 1 – fight fight fight!
Option 1
Booted feet slammed into Nino’s chest, sending him back down into the mud. A green hand, scarred and thick with muscle locked around his throat.
The ork grinned at him, its teeth slick with bloody saliva.
Nino roared, punching up with both fists, shattering the vile grin. Combat stimms made his blood bubble and filled his veins with poisonous lightning. He kicked the ork hard between the legs, shoving upwards and rolling. He came astride it, his hearts beating double time and his helmet filling with bloody froth.
He yanked the pipe from the ork and brought it down in a two handed blow, caving in its squealing face. He struck again, feeling the thick skin and bone split. He howled as he struck again and again, each strike painting his armour with filthy blood.
He smashed the pipe down until there was nothing left of the orks face, just broken bones and bleeding meat.
The crowd roared and fired their crude pistols, throwing junk and dung into the fighting pit. Some tossed bones and scraps of armour, trophies they had taken from the Ultramarines on the battlefield.
Oh, for a bolter and chainsword! Nino would leap from the pit and slay and slay until the shame of capture was buried under a tied of dead.
Nino raised his head to look at the bellowing hoard of ork’s that stamped and shouted at the edge of the pit.
“Next!”
Option 2
The ork cracks my skull. It punches me so hard that his claw closes on my intestine. Another blow shatters my collar bone.
I fall.
In vision edged by flame I see my opponent holding my arm in its mechanical claw. I laugh as he crushes it into paste.
This Warlord cannot stop me.
How can he? I cannot stop myself.
Fire fills me, the joined power of the Librarius igniting my blood. I let the fury of a hundred generations of my Chapters Epistolary’s and Codicier’s fill me. I surrender and let the power take me.
The ork dies as I fill its body with a monsoon of fire. A hundred more scream their war-lust at me and charge, but I am inviolate to their wrath; I am wrath itself. My brothers pour strength into me, filling me with the essences of every member of our Librarius, using me as a conduit for their strength.
More orks die.
I am the Immolus itself, Mount Death Fire incarnate!
Other sons of Vulkan open fire in my shadow, bolters and flamers holding the orks at bay. I will show you true destruction, brothers.
I kill them too, turning the fire on the Fireborn. This is my gift to you brothers. Burn and know the will of Vulkan.
I can hear myself screaming and a part of me knows I have done wrong. I do not care. I have power enough to challenge the Emperor himself!
Option 3
We collide in mid-air, flight packs screaming. Black armour strikes blue armour like a metal avalanche. His shout is a throat ripping bellow that coats my helm with blood. My chainsword swings through the smoke from his rocket pack.
I hit nothing.
His axe hacks down, cracking the proud sigil of the Ultramarines, sending me tumbling through the air.
I smash into a ledge, rubble spinning away into the crevasse beneath.
Fires burn a thousand feet below.
Horns blare as Titans duel with ork Gargants, smashing hive spires and drowning city blocks in fire. The corpse of a Warhound burns below, its death responsible for the gutted ruin of the hive tower we duel in.
My opponent leers down like some corroded gargoyle, balancing on a broken spar that hangs across the drop.
The Goff’s pack revs and spits more black smoke. It launches itself at me across the gap, spittle flying from its jaws, a war scream on its lips.
My own turbines whine in battle lust. I leap from the ledge, my chainsword howling. My armour pumps in combat stimms, my blood pulsing with chemical rage. This ends now!
We smash together, metal beating metal, voices saw blade screams. I trap his axe arm. His fist cracks my helmet, filling my mouth with blood.
We are falling together, the hungry flames beneath ready for us.
I ram my grenade belt into his screaming mouth, right down his bloody throat.
I kick away seconds before his head detonates.
The Test Brief Part 2 Maximum 250 words
Option 1
“A bloody big bomb,” sergeant Pilus interrupted.
The Martian Adept that had been speaking blurted scrap code in displeasure. Its mechadendrites ruffled its robes in indignation.
“That is not strictly correct, sergeant. The Xenos have aligned the pillars as a form of energy gathering matrix that, according to our calculations -”
“Will it explode, Adept?”
“Affirmative, but -”
“Then it’s a bomb as far as I’m concerned.” Pilus turned back to his squad. “I wouldn’t wish this on the First Company, lads, but we’re here, so we’ve got a job to do.”
“What can we expect sir?” a scout asked.
“Glad you asked, brother,” Pilus grinned, “looks like the Tau have found some sort of xenos architech down in their mines. We’re going to be sneaking our way through tunnels tighter than a ratlings arsehole, trying not to get shot by their damned Fire Caste. I saw Kroot life signs on the scans, as well. Remember that talk we had about Kroot?”
A few heads nodded.
“Good.” Pilus cracked his knuckles. “How long do we have, Adept?”
“Two hundred and forty eight minutes.”
“No problem. Right, Saul, you and -”
“Error… one hundred and six minutes. Error… ninety minutes and forty seconds. Error… twenty minutes and thirty seconds.”
The squad watched the Adept tremble for a moment in the agony of calculation.
“Correction; twenty minutes and twenty four seconds.”
“You’re sure?”
“Affirmative.”
Pilus turned to his squad.
“Let’s get cracking, boys.”
Option 2
Nino raised a hand to the vox bead in his ear.
“You never said there’d orks down here.”
“I never told you a lot of things, scout,” came the response, “and you should address me as ‘Sergeant’.”
Nino ignored the reprimand.
“How many are there?”
“Enough. I believe we started with six, collected from Tariun IV. It is possible they have multiplied.”
“Why would you do that?” Ipath interrupted, sweeping his bolter across the tunnel mouth. Tomaz, Ikedon and Saul kept their weapons up as the squad crept down the burrow.
“I have high standards for my recruits.”
“That is not an answer, sergeant.” Ipath’s voice was rich with anger.
“It is all the answer he needs, brother,” Saul said.
“Of all people, Saul, I thought you -”
“Fun as this bickering is,” Tomaz hissed across the vox, “I want to live to see full implantation. So, kindly, shut up.” The Ultramarines stalked through the tunnels artificial night, their light scout armour edged with frost.
Nino could hear his brothers misty breathing all around him, could just make out their forms in the darkness. Beneath the sound of the squad he could hear something else.
“Sergeant?”
“Yes, scout?”
“What else is down here with us?”
The breathing was low and deep. Nino pictured massive lungs powering each exhalation.
“Many things, brother.”
“Anything big? Bigger than an Astartes I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Like?”
The breathing became a purr, like a well-run engine. Nino knew the sound.
It’s…
“A Carnodon,” the sergeant said.
Option 3
Engines roaring, the Rhino clanged like a bell as the tank slammed into the wreck of another ruined vehicle. Munitions hammered against its armoured flanks in a monsoon of firepower ending as the tank made juddered and slammed into the shooters.
Sergeant Isko laughed.
“Right in at the bloody end, brothers,” he said to the scouts strapped in to the restraint harnesses. He got a few short smiles from the younglings.
“On your feet, Iron Hands,” he barked. The scouts sprang up, grabbing the overhead hand holds as the Rhino lurched to one side.
“Brothers,” Isko couldn’t keep the grin from his face. “Be joyful. Battle is the purest action man can enact. It will sharpen you, refine you.”
He held up his agumetic hand, “I lost this in my first mission. My purification. This is yours.”
“What are our orders, sergeant?” One asked.
“Kill, brother Indrik. That is all. When we open those doors we will be at the heart of the manufactory. We will strip away the impurity of Xenos flesh and return the purity of the machine.”
The Rhino banged and rocked as something exploded against it.
“Are you pure, brothers?” The scouts looked at him, seeing his lips spread wide, his ugly metal teeth on full display.
“Are you pure,” Isko slammed his metal fist into the tanks ceiling.
“No, sir,” the scouts chorused.
“Are you strong?”
“No, sir.”
“What will make you so?”
“War!”
Possible new stuff.
Test 1
Librarian vs a weird boy
Flashgit vs a devastator
Warboss vs a captain
Truck boy vs srgt – red means stop
Tankbusta vs centurion
Test 2
Zimm the drill srgt – Starship troopers
What is best in life – Conan
A game of go between the scouts and their srgt
Assault course
Rocky montage
Scouts in hive ship – running running running!
I’ll see what I cook up over the next week.
joustingwiththeimagination 