Dark Heresy Cruelty

[Imperial Overlord]

New session.

The 6,000 thrones that I handed out at the end of last session is in bank accounts on Scintilla, so they have to actually go there to access the money. One of the players decides he wants to go shopping for flak armour before he makes planetfall, despite the fact that he has a flak vest and limited funds on ship.

So Brahm goes shopping with Steve 1.0 and Gordon. He finds someone selling what he's looking for. All good. Then he decides to use Touch of Madness to make the seller think the armour has a flaw to beat down the price. He succeeds, but rolls a 9. Result? All the vegetable matter within 16 meters rots. In a crowded market with foodstuff in a ship that was attacked by plague zombies last week.

Everyone goes batshit and calls of "witch" go out. Brahm then decides to blame random passing crewman and take a shot at him. He misses, crewman rabbits, Steve 1.0 backs up the calls of "witch", and the Merciful (the Misericord's security troops) lock the market down quickly (they were already there). Panicked random crewman ends up eating several shotgun rounds and dying. The Merciful round everyone up, tie them, drug them, and drop them into the brig to be sorted out at their convenience.

If nothing further had happened the investigation would have eventually concluded that a Sanctioned Psyker had spotted a witch who had run and been blasted by the Merciful (poor random crew dude). Except things don't go that way. Dana, the tech priest, decides to use Inquisitional juice to spring them from the brig. Since he doesn't have it, he ends up waking the interrogator, who has been working like a dog all week.

The interrogator goes to the brig to spring them and get a report on what happened, so he knows who to terrify/reprimand/reward/shoot as the situation requires. This is where the rails really come off.

Gordon tells the truth. Now I love my brother, but he should never, ever speak for the party. He has a spectacular ability to present his group and himself in a true but spectacularly unflattering light. He also has a terrible sense of judging his audience which means he usually includes things that might be better left out.

So poor Valerus Demetrius has been dragged away from his precious sleep to find out that his new rookie agents have gotten arrested and gotten an innocent subject of the Emperor killed because one of them wanted to save a few thrones on some additional flak armour. He's not fucking happy. Across the table from me Chris (Umbras) has his "watching the train wreck" expression on his face.

Then Brahm weighs in. Gordon has totally torpedoed the plausible enough "stick to the lie" plan for which he's earned a huge amount of ire from Brahm (who is also known for laying a death curse on Gordon in an Earthdawn campaign several years ago). He's a smart guy, but he's notoriously bad at these situations (most infamously in Steve 2.0's vampire campaign). So he admits to it and then tries to spin it, saying it was a teamwork building exercise.

At this point Valerius, who a blind man could tell was in a very foul temper, explodes. Brahm has to burn a fate point not to get the contents of his skull evacuated by means of a pistol shot as an example of what will happen to the rest of them if they try to scam Demetrius. Brahm oozes warm love in the general direction of Gordon.

They then hit dirt side in Hive Sibellus and some of them haven't yet grasped the implications of a nation-sized city. They get a room and they do some shopping. Umbras is in ridiculous ultra Scrooge mode, unwilling to spend a throne more than required, which clashes with Brahm's quest for good light body armour. And that's about where we ended.

[Academia Nut]

Ah, 40k, where often times if you just keep your frakking mouth shut you'll have a much better chance of survival. Also, psychic powers are not a play thing, as my players learned. The psyker had to burn a fate point to keep from dying after the encounter with the daemonette. Also, that deadly allure power plus the daemonic presence when most of the players are sufering from penalties due to fear really fucks people up.

But yeah, I must admit that as a GM whenever a 9 was rolled for manifestation a cruel little smile crossed my face.

Oh, and paying due obedience to the Emperor has its advantages. One of the guys who said that he was going to kneel down to pray at the little shrine they were waiting at before the main fight started let off a burst from an autogun and got six hits, while the guy who was a bit standoffish and being a bit of a prick and wasn't giving the Emperor his due managed to miss a stunned enemy with a masterwork sword while making a charge, with Berserk Charge. He needed a 78 to hit. He got an 80.

The Emperor truly does protect.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I thought that it wasn't FEAR that those girls are projecting....

[Imperial Overlord]

So my players went shopping and quickly found out that although a hive might have everything because it is so big, finding it is hard because the hive is so damn big. Steve 1.0 and Brahm went wandering off and then got lucky. They got directed to someone could help them.

So half an hour later they are being questioned by a conservatively dressed old man in the pleasant but plain foyer of the Honorable Guild of Ratters and Vermin Hunters. Although it is never discussed directly, it is clear that sometime in its past the guild mutated into primarily an organization of bounty hunters and guides to dangerous parts of the hive. They make their needs known and are given a contact number. The ratter who will be able to assist them will be available tomorrow.

So they go back to their rooms and eat and sleep. Umbras goes shopping for expensive guns, finds them, and then asks after multikeys. He gets rebuffed, tries again, gets rebuffed more severely (they are illegal), and then offers a pitiful bribe (for a very high end shop). He gets asked to leave, but as he's already loaded up, he's willing to quit while he's ahead.

The ratter arrives, a badass with a sword, shotgun, and light carapace under his trench coat. He guides them to the Underhive and they find the gangers. They're living in a partially submerged building and have been on a two year long losing streak. They make peaceful contact with the gang and find out that the ganger they were looking for was captured by their enemies and sold as a slave a year and a half ago. They find out who the slavers were and the ratter is able to confirm much of the story. The players leave without violence.

The psykers are a little paranoid and making pscience checks a lot. They find a psyker and insist of going to investigate. None of the party goes with them. Some Underhive trash gives them some mild problems, but bad rolling by me and effective tactics by them means ass kickage. They find the psyker, a very ill adolescent boy. They take him out, to be turned over to the psyker dungeons and the Black Ships.

The slavers in question are the League of Travelers, a transportation organization responsible for moving foodstuffs from one of the agricultural areas. Some of them smuggle for extra profits, a fact which is well known in the underworld. Session ends.

The players will be getting a thousand Throne bonus each and another five thousand thrones in additional operating funds for the next session.

[Imperial Overlord]

So my players decide to trace the League of Travelers to their center of operations, a district known as Glass Houses. They take the pricier option of flying there and get a nice overhead view of a vast agricultural district made of fields of two kilometer long farm factories, which are topped with roofs made of thick green glass. Train lines run through the district and small hive spires dot the area. The end up landing in one of them, securing some cheap lodgings, and then going hunting.

They quickly discover the dress and behavior codes of this region are quite different from the previous part of the spire. Some of them buy upscale clothing and a bloody duel erupts when they are visibly carrying firearms. Their is a violent dueling culture, but only blades may be honorably used. Firearms are permissible for nobles and their close retainers (who don't display them openly), the Magistarium, and soldiers but are otherwise severely frowned on.

But they avoid violence. Some of them go looking for bouncers for the skinny on the underworld and other go to the fighting pits. Steve 2.0 ends up scoring with some slumming aristos and being sidelined with a night of passion. The rest gather information and, despite the odds, make some serious money gambling when they were expecting to lose some (posing as the idle rich).

They find out the underworld is (locally) controlled by the Guild of Butchers and Renders. They're large, have access to lots of stabby-stabby things, big beefy guys, and ways of making bodies disappear. The Travelers are a tributary criminal enterprise and, more specifically, the flesh trade is controlled by the Butchers. So the ganger they're tracking probably passed through the Butchers' hands.

That's pretty much were we left off, with them trying to formulate a plan of action.

[Academia Nut]

Sorry about the bit of the necro, but after nearly a month I finally managed to get my group together again, and this time I decided to send them down to a planet to try and take out a group of cultist who tried to destroy the ship they had been travelling on. Unfortunately for them as the shuttles were descending fire from concealed plasma and missile emplacements on the ground knocked out several of the shuttles and crippled theirs, causing their ship to break up and them to plunge to the planet below.

When they woke up they found that they had, through the divine grace of the Emperor they managed to not die, although all of the other redshirts aboard with them were toast, except for one gun servitor armed with a heavy bolter and 30 rounds of ammo. Anyway, as they are assessing what is left, I have a saurian carnosaur walk out of the jungle and spy upon them.

What then happens is best described of as a cavalcade of really bad rolls and decisions. I mean, extraordinarily bad. Basically what I intended to happen was for Alpha-Eti-47/C (we nicknamed him 'Eddie') to hit the carnosaur a few times while the PCs plink away before it eventually got within range and ripped the servitor apart but then the IG player would use his flamer to put the dino down with fatigue and then they could just kill it with the assassin's mono-edged sword to the brain.

What happened was that apparently the impact screwed up Eddie's targetting systems because of the four rounds the battle took he jammed the first turn and missed the other two, with a full auto weapon against an enormous target. Meanwhile the PCs have come upon the bright idea that if they can get one of the psykers to cast Inflict Pain on the carnosaur then the assassin can charge forward and hurl a grenade in its mouth while it is roaring in agony. The first time they try this the assassin misses although the carnosaur does take some shrapnel damage.

The second time they try the psyker gets a Warp Phenomenon. I roll. 99. Alright, Perils of the Warp time. I roll again...

Oh...

Fuck...

The dice staring back at me read 9 and 9. Those of you with the book are wincing now, and for those of you without, rolling a 99 on the Perils of the Warp means that the psyker gets turned into an unbound daemonhost. I immediately told the psyker to just burn his fate point otherwise we would be looking at a total party kill in a second, but he still took the 4d10+1 corruption points, bringing him up to 19 corruption. He passed his malignancy check, but I ruled that the psychic agony caused him to drop to the ground screaming and howling, forcing a fear check for everyone else. Everyone but the guard passed, and even the guard was just shaking a trembling and had a flame weapon anyway.

So now one of the psykers is on the ground after having just peered into the mind of a daemon, the assassin is four metres from a reptilian death machine, and the guard decides to fire the flamer, with the assassin in the way (the player is a bit of a prick). The assassin dodges, but the carnosaur doesn't, so now its on fire.

Then Eddie fires his last 10 bolter shells. 9 miss. 1 hits. I roll damage. 2d10.

8 (pretty good)
10 (sweet)

I decide, what the hell, and roll righteous fury, these guys need it. I hit and roll again.

10

Holy shit. I roll again. 7. Yes ladies and gentlemen, with one shell Eddie did 35 explosive damage to the carnosaur, which had already taken 22 damage. The thing exploded in a shower of gore that coated the assassin in bits of flaming dinosaur.

So that's where we ended. It was a pretty good game I think. I was probably over generous at times, and I should have had the carnosaur start closer than I did, but considering that the part was nearly wiped out by an unbound daemonhost, I don't feel bad about it at all. I have a feeling that these guys are going to end up insane and/or damned long before they actually die.