"I took my first breaths long before there was rain."
-Unknown source, possibly an Astropath attached to the Xi-40 Explorator Fleet

This shouldn't be working. It's impossible for it to be working.

---

Read the previous threads at: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=False%20Woman

You possess an amount of Strain equal to your Conditioning score. When attempting actions beyond your current capacity, you gain a point of Strain. Attempting to Strain while at maximum Strain will result in a Strain Check. During a Strain Check, roll 1d10 for every point of the relevant Parameter. Results that are 6 or above count as one success. Results of 10 count as two successes. Three successes must be rolled to avert a critical failure. Fail or pass, after a Strain Check, you cannot Strain again until you restore your Strain by seeking shelter.

This quest allows you to designate a second-choice vote on decisions with three or more options before Write-Ins. When votes are totaled, the option with the least votes for it will be removed, with votes for that option instead being changed to the second-choice of those voters. Second-choice votes are also used to break ties. This helps increase the accuracy of votes, but is not mandatory. Please specifically mark your second-choice as such if you do so.

Vote stay open for a minimum of six hours, but will usually take longer.

A note: My writing style is pretty dry, but don't mistake that for it being serious.

Tilting your head, you glance to your left and crack your eyes open. “No sign of them... does that strike you as odd?”

Buddy looked at you. “Only on the other side of the door? How can you tell?”

“This panel is interfaced with a local node of the noosphere. I'm connected to the cameras on the network.” You feel your lips twitch, and you press your lips together to stop them. “I'm not seeing anything on the cameras, and...” You close your eyes, performing an unnecessary double-check of the camera feeds, as if your memory wasn't flawless. “The fans I can see on the feeds are moving. The footage isn't being manipulated... or so I think.”

“Might just mean we lost ‘em.” Buddy offered.“ You turned right into the hallway before I saw you. That corridor you were in continues straight for a time- it doesn’t turn right. And we went straight and parallel to that. That means the corridor this door is connected to likely isn't directly connected.”

“That's true.” You send an impulse down the plug, reaching up to the plug on the back of your head as the spirit responds, pulling the cable free as the door hissed and began to roll into the frame. “The alternative is staying here, otherwise.” You wince a little as the plug comes free, a disconcerting feeling of the inside of your skull sliding thudding into you. It felt like you had just clenched down on one of your teeth, an odd, numb throb accompanied by sudden coolness on the inside of the socket as the plug left it.

You glance at the plug as it falls to the side, the reel inside the panel quickly pulling it back in. Your lips curl up again, then you glance at Buddy, try to force your expression more neutral and immediately fail as you break out into a full grin.

Buddy spares you only a brief glance, instead opting to take the lead and step through the doorway, a pistol you couldn't recall him drawing suddenly in his hand. “You all good, A-4?”

You fight against your smile. “I'm fine. I've just never done that before.”

“I thought you were a technomat or something?”

“I was... nearly one.” You glance aside, your grin still remaining high. “This is probably as close as I'll get. It's... nice.”

“I dunno, A-4. If my last enginseer was anything to go by, the Mechanicus will take anyone, no matter how badly they frak it up.” Buddy stopped near a turn in the corridor, carefully leaning around the corner before turning past it. “How confident are you in a firefight?”

You suddenly remember your own pistol, reaching under your gown and removing it from the holster on your bodyglove. There was a sinking feeling in your chest, and you flipped the pistol over in your hand to reveal... yes. There was still no power cell within it. You had forgotten to replace it. You sigh.

“Something wrong?”

“My laspistol doesn't have a power supply."

“I've only got the one stubber, I'm afraid.”

>>6224198
“Suboptimal.” You mutter, glancing down at it. “Perhaps I won't need it. Tell me if you see any power cells that look like they'd fit in the-”

The pistol in your hand sparks.

Green lights illuminate and flicker on the ammo counter, and it hums in your hand with a pleasant feeling that makes your wrist buzz slightly. It showed 01, then abruptly dropped into a flashing 00 before ticking up- 07, 23, all the way to 40 shots before the counter flashed once and remained steady.

“...grip...” You finish, looking at it. Why was it active? Did Tobias forget to remove all of the modifications? No, that would be tech-heresy, even if he was only an enginseer. You gently depress the trigger very slightly, enough to wake the spirit, but not to fire it. It began humming, the display growing brighter to allow you to see the ammo counter again. It seemed like it was working.

How?

“Alright, I'll keep an eye out.” Buddy continues, gesturing for you to follow as he poked his head out the next door. You look up at him, then down at the pistol before lowering it and hurrying after him, gripping your torso with your free arm so you could follow him quicker, the hem of your dress flapping around your calves. He set a quick pace- almost faster than you could keep up with, but you couldn't find it in your to ask him to slow down.

“So, I didn't know you could actually smile.” Buddy casually mentioned.

That finally got your grin to go down. “I am absolutely capable of smiling." You say flatly. “Why wouldn't I be?”

>Keep badgering him about his comment.
>"Do you actually have a plan on where we're going?"
>"We need to go somewhere we can actually meet with someone."
>[Write-In]

>>6224199
>"Do you actually have a plan on where we're going?"

>>6224199
>>Keep badgering him about his comment.

>>6224199
>"Do you actually have a plan on where we're going?"
>Keep badgering him about his comment.

Y'know, we'll just do both, why not.
>"Do you actually have a plan on where we're going?"
>Keep badgering him about his comment.

OH SHIT, WE'RE BACK

>>6231775
Aaaaand my... trip... changed? I was actually kinda worried about this- if they got the source code, they got the trip cipher, right? Doesn't that mean all old trips are cracked, now?

I heard some people kept formatting privileges, let's see.

Apologies for the delay, I legitimately just wasn't checking every day to see if we were still here.

“Oh, I just thought it was maybe a tankborn thing. Like, it'd make you better at gambling. Or giving bad news.”

“I don't gamble.”

“Have you ever considered it? You'd be good at it." Buddy seemed to reconsider. “Or too good...”

“Do you actually have a plan on where we're going?” You ask, glancing behind you as the corridor vanished around the turn. “I'm not familiar with this exact section.”

“Up, obviously.” Buddy replied, poking his head around the corner before stepping around quickly. “But first? Out of here. We don't want to have any trouble with those other dudes.”

You admit you didn't have a better plan, either. Flipping your laspistol over in your hand, you hurry after Buddy with it pressed across your chest, your other hand holding up your skirt so you could move quickly. “That works.” You pause. “Also, I smile all the time. You just don't notice.”

“Hey, I'd spend more time taking in your features if we weren't running away right now.”

“That's not the point. The point is-”

DEPTH 4
ASCENT

Every footstep on the scaffolding of this place let out a resounding clang, rattling the bolts in their grooves and making the metal creak ominously. You weren't concerned, though. It was wan metal, old but still holding fast, and when you brushed it, you could feel the fatigue in the metal- fatigued, but not yet enough to break. It would hold, this you knew.

Navigating the hive on foot was proving time-consuming, but your hunt took you through multiple levels that simply did not have developed road access- much less to the sort of vehicles you could actually take. While you were positive many would gladly offer their transportation to you, requiring the drivers to potentially enter into danger with you was not something you were willing to do.

Your name is Andromedies.

For three weeks since making planetfall, you had walked the length of this hive, following the stink of corruption to it's obvious source. You had relieved seven such places of their burdensome faith so far, and this would be the seventh.

You come to a break in the walkway, the gap many times longer than a man. Raising your head, you see the bridge they had constructed, crudely swiveled to the side to create a moat of air separating their facility from the rest of the hive. Inclining your head, you examine the guard tower some thirty meters away.

Abandoned, it would seem.

Stepping back several paces, you pause before bursting forward, accelerating and hitting the lip of the walkway and launching yourself off. Sailing through the air, you bring your sword to bear, free hand reaching up and catching the rim of the walkway and pivoting around it, throwing yourself through the other end. Your boots skid on the floor before they halt with a brief impulse, and you look around.

No ambush in the shadow of the doors. No evidence of a guard at all, in fact. Had they anticipated your coming?

>>6231789
You reach down, gripping the bulkhead door that closed off this section and raising it with a grinding of metal and gears, stepping through to behold the scene on the other side.

It would seem that someone had gotten here first.

Bodies littered the ground in front of you, their skulls split by lasfire and bolt detonations. The air was still acrid with the smell of ozone, though the bodies were cold. You step past the bodies, briefly lifting some as you pass with the tip of your sword, eyeing them for mining. The ones you clear, you freely step on. They were mere minions of the Archenemy, after all.

The rear of the room was curtained with thick sheets of industrial plasflex, sewn and melted into sheets and doused with chemicals to keep them sterile. Your wrist flings them along their track until they slam in their containing receptacle. Before you, a great bay - one clearly modified from a vehicle lift, meant to cradle something while it was worked on from all sides - lay empty. Thick power conduits wormed from every surface, once having powered the entirety of the bay's machinery, one of which included a rather impressive arc welder that couldn't have been trivial to operate for these men.

You memorize the dimensions of the bay. There were inquiries that could be made as to what was once here, given all the evidence you could muster. It was smaller than a Speeder, you surmised. Definitely not any smaller than a bike, possibly a Raider, but you weren't willing to rule out the possibility. Perhaps a rival cell had attacked them for it? Or they had cracked under the pressure, turning on each other to sell whatever their project was. You could stretch your senses over the local market, if that were the case. A trivial task, perhaps, but it was why you were here.

>Take a methodical approach. Leave absolutely no possibility or stone unturned.
>This was a matter for the local authorities, not for you. The Emperor's work - that is to say, location number nine. And ten.

>>6231791
>>This was a matter for the local authorities, not for you. The Emperor's work - that is to say, location number nine. And ten.

>>6231791
>Take a methodical approach. Leave absolutely no possibility or stone unturned.

Okay, aah... I'm not sure how to split this. I'm going to start writing and see, but I'm not going to close the vote yet.

...and I'm gonna drop the notice that we're back in /qtg/ now that the outage is over, which I... am realizing I've forgotten to do on each new thread for months, now.

>>6231791
>>Take a methodical approach. Leave absolutely no possibility or stone unturned.

>>6235025
>This was a matter for the local authorities, not for you. The Emperor's work - that is to say, location number nine. And ten.

Glad everything is back Bentus.
though we aren't as many, glad to be back.

>>6238470
I'm honestly mostly salty the outage happened just as I was starting to get my momentum back. The actual bullshit that had made my pace slip resolved months ago, but it's been slow getting back into the swing of things, and just as I was starting to hit solid writing sessions every night- forced vacation.

>>6238577
Not only that, but losing the threads and finding them in the catalog again loses participants like myself.
Glad you're back in any case BentQM

>>6231791
>This was a matter for the local authorities, not for you. The Emperor's work - that is to say, location number nine. And ten.
SM have their job, but that doesn't mean they will ignore targets of opportunity along the way, so blamming anything on the way.

You kneel down and grab one of the bodies, pinching it's head between your thumb and forefinger. The corpse had no obvious signs of corruption, though it would have been easier to tell in life. That was consistent with most of the previous sites- little to no signs of corruption, mostly clean personnel, unfortunate renegades and recidivists who had unknowingly become vessels for something beyond their ken.

It was a shame, but you'd shed no tears for the traitor.

Standing, you return to the edge of the entrance again. Looking down, you could see the scaffolding descending into darkness, faded Low Gothic symboling indicating this was still part of the hive's fourth level. The placement of these hidden workshops had placed them close to the forges, though for what purpose you had yet to ascertain. They were not producing anything for the locals beyond the occasional production of arms. They didn't appear to be sapping material from the forges or raw resource chutes, nor were they attempting to make heretical imitations of the local forge goods. Why they were so close to the forges remained an open question, it seemed. It was disconnected from everything else about Odrev, yet they were making machinery and sending the results somewhere.

Offworld, perhaps? That could have dangerous implications for the hive nobility, though that was beyond your ken. Once you had made certain the threat had been extinguished, the Arbites and the Ordo Hereticus would be more than capable of dealing with the legal consequences.

With a few blink-clicks, you summon the picts you had secreted from your auto-senses, each detailing significant markings, individuals and symbols of each of the sites you had purged. Any one of them could be significant evidence for the planetary authorities, but for you they were significant only in how they would narrow your search. The impulse of corruption was distinct, but it like all things of it's kind could only be relied upon with wariness.

There were a number of recurring symbols among the images, many Mechanicus in nature - unsurprising, considering this hive's inclinations - while others appeared to be nothing more than common gang signs. Distorted municipal icons, bold color and the like. Typical hivers, expecting heraldic originality was too much.

So far, you had been making links between the symbols and their original municipalities, or by Arbites crime databases, allowing you to narrow the search to a swathe of hab blocks, from where you'd continue the hunt. That had been getting increasingly difficult as you worked, as you steadily eliminated all of the leads the Arbites had uncovered themselves. Now the symbols remaining were virtual unknowns, the only thing clear being their vague composition.

And this place had been purged...

>>6245240
Your previous activities had not been subtle, but why not change locations instead of purging the workers? Had the product been completed, and the workers disposed of? Or was it punishment for failure? Factional conflict? The question weighed on you...

>There would be little point in narrowing a search of heretics. You could do more and better simply by getting to the next site first, before it could be purged as well.
>Your skills with the citizenry leaves much to be desired, but you doubt there were few citizens who would not volunteer all that they knew, should you be the one asking.
>It would be time-consuming, but rather risking the hunt going cold, it was time to take flight and seek more esoteric information.

>>6245241
>>There would be little point in narrowing a search of heretics. You could do more and better simply by getting to the next site first, before it could be purged as well.

>>6245241
>>There would be little point in narrowing a search of heretics. You could do more and better simply by getting to the next site first, before it could be purged as well.

>>6245241
>There would be little point in narrowing a search of heretics. You could do more and better simply by getting to the next site first, before it could be purged as well.

>There would be little point in narrowing a search of heretics. You could do more and better simply by getting to the next site first, before it could be purged as well.
Writing.

Bentus ded

>>6258694
BENTUS CONVINCING HIMSELF THAT HE ACTUALLY LIKES HIS JOB MORE LIKE

>>6258894

>>6259022
God, I can't wait to be out of here next week. More on that after the update, I'm hitting my heroic second wind here before I collapse.

An earsplitting rattling tore past your head as you drove yourself to the side. The pommel of your blade struck a man circling behind you, and on a return swing, you bore through a woman who's face was half-fused shut with scar tissue.

Your armor was becoming filthy. Red was starting to cake over the yellow paint, forming layers that dried from repeated exposure to the hive's wildly diverging atmospheric zones and the discharge of your own power. It would build up until the red formed deep rims along the creases of the armor, only to dry and peel away in sheets.

Occasionally, one of the sites had surprised you with their tenacity and preparation, but the presence of an autocannon here had not been in your list of portents.

Swinging yourself to the side, your pistol came up in your hand. The head of the loader detonated in a sphere of gore, followed by his second, a man who had been firing at you with an overcharged lasrifle connected to conduits on the floor. You paused for a fraction of a second, then loosed a bolt through the gap in the autocannon's shield, blowing the main gunner's throat and separating his head from his shoulders. Your gaze lingers a little too long on him, and you push past him to drive your fist through the nearest man, holstering your pistol to raise your sword against the remaining mortals.

Their tenacity was commendable, but it wasn't pure. There was no true zeal to their movements, no real fury like a warrior of the Emperor had, just a mad haste and unflinching desire to strike you down. That didn't earn them a quicker death than any, but it did earn them your caution, a rare accolade. One man was drawn to your hand, ripping out his knife to try and strike into the joints of your armor before you swiped your blade through his head, the return swing taking the lives of two in an acrid blast of bioelectricity that erupted from the body of the first when your blade made contact.

Whirling on the last man, you raise your blade only to see him slump to the ground, his breath escaping from blue lips. Veins stood out against his face, and he twitched, an injector mark still visible on his arm. You take a moment to drive the blade through his chest. He hadn't been able to handle it. As before, they was brave- but not smart.

>>6259067
You raise your eyes to the ceiling- or rather, the sky. The hive lifted away from your head, here, in a block where the rooms were already enlarged to forge standard, the lack of hab subdivisions rendered each section large enough to land entire wings of Thunderhawks within. Here, though, the ceiling pulled up and away from you, extending into a point so distant you could only vaguely see the end of the shaft, even with your enhanced vision. It was a straight connection, but it must go several dozen levels up, potentially even all the way to the upper spires. That didn't fit with the operation you had been uncovering. If they saw fit to maintain such a connection, it was because they were expecting to use it. Yet, if they wished to produce and ship war material offworld, compromising the spaceport would be easier than constructing it themselves.

A delivery mechanism, then? That didn't fit with the image of their logistics you had pieced together. And yet, if this was a point where material was gathered for export, why wasn't the missing material from the previous cells gathered here? That was troubling, as if material wasn't being sent, then it was certainly arri-

You feel an impulse before the words come.

“Welcome, my wayward brother.”

You turn at the booming voice, magnified to impossible volume by the vox-grille of the wearer. Your bolt pistol raises in your hand, reflexively drawing your blade with the other. Atop a nearby work table, another armored figure reclined, decorated in grey, black and yellow, his shoulders draped with a tattered fur cloak that was incongruous against his armor, and shot full of holes. He leaned forward on an enormous battle axe, the shaft pressed into his pauldron and supporting his weight against the floor.

“This is our first time meeting, if I recall."

Faster than thought, your pistol fires, the bolt flying true, even as the warrior twists to the side, taking the mass-reactive round on his pauldron, the shell skidding off and detonating in a chip in the ceramite, blowing a small crater in his armor. The stranger merely grunted, letting out a soft breath as he hefted his axe in one hand.

You follow with three more rounds, your boots starting to fly against the ground, blade coming alive with a nimbus of aetheric energy, holding the blade to the side in a low stance.

A barking laugh came from his vox-grille. “I already like your spirit, loyalist." Abandoning pretense, the traitor raises his axe into a proper guard, spiked helmet grill letting out a hiss of static at the impact. “The pleasure of this duel is all mine.”

Archived: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2025/6224195/

Okay, you might have noticed that this update doesn't have a vote attached to it. I am going to be on a very overdue vacation starting in one week, and I have no intention of updating the quest while I'm away, so I'm delaying putting up the next thread until then. Frankly, I've been overworking myself lately anyway, so I intend to take this time to actually rest and no-life Death Stranding 2 instead of worrying about the thread. It just so happens this was supposed to be where we were wrapping up Andromedies POV anyway, so it actually works out that we'll be able to resume back in A4's POV when I get back.

If everything goes as expected, False Woman will resume starting in... probably mid-July. Ol' Benty needs some time to recharge the batteries and remember what sleeping when it's dark out feels like.

That said, this thread is still a few spots from the bottom, so I suppose... any questions about the quest? I don't really get questions anymore, but I don't know if that's just because I've improved enough as a writer that people don't need to ask clarifying questions or what.

>>6259076
Oh, and the new thread will be properly announced on twitter and /qtg/ this time, I swear.

>>6259076
COADE..........

>>6259488
COADE... is coming, friend. This quest has actually been a solid experimenting in teaching me about my limits, and it's going to inform a lot of how COADE will run when I return. The one thing I regret a little is not experimenting with dice mechanics more in this quest, because I've never run with real dice and sometimes I feel the lost opportunity to let players try something without knowing ahead of time whether it'll work. That might be something I play with during the COADE interlude, but we'll see.

I'm also currently rereading COADE to remind myself of all the damn details I decided on when I didn't take notes like a moron. Damn, this quest is kinda well-written. What idiot wrote it?