(Preshow) Registration (Where You Sign Up IC)

[Okor]

Lydia’s exquisitely manicured nails tapped  against her delicate chin, the frankly absurd amounts of cosmetic surgery she had invested in clearly paying off. The Green’s gate was all but dead. The only thing that had come close to the booth was an Orcish hunting party, and the Syntech logo was recognized even in these savage lands. It was widely agreed throughout the Omniverse that a Syntech operation was far more entertaining to watch than to destroy. Too-straight teeth mashed a wad of bright-pink gum as she lazily surveyed the clearing, resting an elbow upon the flawless surface of the desk, the technicians responsible for the gate lounging in the shade. They were a motley crew, capable of debating the nature of Omnillium for hours on end in more temperate climes. Elvish Warlocks arranged crystals in intricate patterns upon the ground, engineers fresh from Coruscant tended to clusters of cables thicker than the average human torso, while a silent cabal anointed a goat in foul-smelling oils.

She didn’t think much about how this managed to get the gate open. Her job was to be a genetically perfect pretty face, not the brains of the operation. Inhuman muscles shifted beneath her near-elven face, subtly adjusting her facial features into a universally pleasant aesthetic. Syntech spared no expense when it came to matters of the Abyss. But more and more, it seemed like a wasted allocation. Where were the savage barbarians emerging from the woods, clad in leather, fur, and glistening oil? The huntresses? She was starting to get bo-

The wet thump of a detonation echoed through the silence. The gate operators and guards scrambled to their feet, another grim proclamation of termination, the sonic indication of a spirit’s emancipation from its mortal coil ever closer. Heavy footfalls reached symmetrical ears, dark-visored guards falling into a defensive position, rifles protruding from chest-high barricades, frantically sweeping the edge of the clearing.

A sapling splintered as a scorched foot fell upon it, blackened armour crushing it beneath a tonne of ceramite and bone. Plumes of greasy smoke rose from the recesses and cracks of his warplate, his flesh burnt away and substituted with the carbonized calcium of his skeletal structure. Three circles ebbed a infectious green, the sickly light emanating from the ashen tatters of his tabard. A firearm rested upon a skull-embossed pauldron, smoke drifting from its muzzle, the ragged remnants of an Orcish head was clutched in ebon fingers, the face frozen mid-roar. The gruesome trophy sailed over the distance, landing upon the grass and slowly rolling across the clearing, resting against the now-stained steel of the desk.

”I am Okor Paleblood, Son of the Fourteenth Legion, Dean of Security, Chosen of Nurgle.”

The utterance came as a growl, the security forces arrayed around the clearing pausing to consider their options, nervously laying their plassteel-clad fingers on their firing studs, wondering if their weapons would even have an effect on the new arrival.

Lydia’s own features shifted rapidly, flowing and molding themselves in an attempt to generate the ideal vision of beauty for the arrival, the pheromones and silent psychic techniques in use struggling against the dead man. With great trepidation, they opened their synthetic lips and asked in a tremulous voice; “W-what do you want?”

The creak of bones as what remained of his face set itself into a grin was audible even from a distance. ”Isn’t it… obvious? I wish to participate.”

A scrawled designation across a sheet later, and the Chosen was cast into the Abyss, the technomagical abominations that cracked open the rift in this warped reality speeding him on his way.