Tizenkilencedik kaland
Exploding goats! Heretic warbands! Chasing our own tail! Orbán Liktor!
As with session 13, we have a copypaste of the war stories I told my other group when they asked what happened.
+++ Thought for the Day: Blessed is the mind too small for doubt. +++
Me: highlights include blowing up a goat via surgically implanted krak grenades, "we don't have to pretend the Inquisition does its job" and the Scum discovering the utility of the Disguise skill
Player 1: Huh :D
Me: first things first
we spent the first two hours trying to do the plans [to kill Ebongrave]
making auspex-proof bottles of cleaning fluid and sewage tunnel-crossing grenade delivery systems
then we started doing our research, ie. looking up how effective Ebongrave has been during the Crusade
much rolling commences, and it turns out that he's actually been on a winning streak against every possible xenos threat and his is currently the most stable Salient of all
we realize this isn't exactly the best political climate for us to assassinate the guy, so we postpone the plans
talk to all the questgiver NPCs on Erioch
nothing of value is learned
then we head out to Eleusis, a newly-reconquered world in the tyrannical grip of the Ecclesiarchy
we've actually been here earlier to buy a shitload of clerics so our ship can actually become heresy-free
we've also gained a certified "we're not heretics" plaque, which is kind of a relief because our crew used to shelter not one, not two, but three suspiciously cultish variations of the Imperial Creed
Player1: Heh
Me: to celebrate this joyous occasion - which we couldn't really, since our ship has been rebuilt and we were using completely different identities than the last time we've been here -, one of our cult leaders has decided we should hold a little get-together
where every cult shares its own little vision of what is right and proper and we're having a nice and civilized little discussion about theology for the education of the crew
Player 2: uh oh
Me: the tech-priest had to re-write the planned speech of the AdMech representative and I had to re-write the planned speech of the death cult representative in order to avoid mass riots, but we prevailed!
we've had a nice and civilized discussion over stale cookies and cheap tea
the crew morale has improved
nobody ended up being knifed
so all in all, we handled it rather deftly
then we landed on the planet and started to feel around a little
we've quickly learned that a bunch of disappearances plague the city
they're spooky and mysterious!
some of them happened every Thursday
others irregularly, but explicitly only around the Catacombs beneath the city
we have immediately theorized the latter must be the work of a Lictor
this made us happy because we've been tasked to catch one alive waaaaaaay back
and our first attempt at dealing with the one we encountered in the wild was far from a rousing success (it couldn't survive being hit by a neuro-whip)
Player 1:
„we've had a nice and civilized discussion over stale cookies and cheap tea
the crew morale has improved
nobody ended up knifed”
Huzzah!
Me: so, we started focusing our efforts on the disappearances of the more heretical nature
also, our GM learned the pain of what it means to be a roll20 GM
he pulled up the map on the big screen in the middle of the room
we, being players, have naturally taken to marking locations of interests, which was done by the psyker
who saw fit to do this via drawing anime hair over the planets whose names have been mentioned
Player 1: :D
Player 2: XD
Me: then I told him about the hitler mustache and tacos of the heretical nature and that he ain't seen nothing yet.
this has taught him humility.
Player 2: I'm happy to see our shenanigans being shared.
Me: in the meantime, our techie contingent has sorted through all the video feeds around the places where domestic disturbances have been reported from on Thursdays
and the presence of a bunch of chanting, cloaked figures seemed to be a common element
we've also gone over the reports of the local enforcers
these noted that the disturbances have taken places around abandoned sites, and they never found any bodies
just some blood spatters occasionally
in the meantime, our psyker has looked around the places and realized that the veil between the warp and realspace has been fading there
and there were sacrifices
our Scum has asked around local property managers - by which I mean mafia types who owned run-down buildings far from civilization for the express purpose of torturing and/or murdering folks there - whether there's been an interest in renting lately
while I have determined by looking at the video feed that some of the cultists seem to have been drugged, and with the help of our medicae expert tech-priest and the scum, managed to narrow it down to a short list of possible substances sold in the local underworld
so we hit the dealers and asked about their clientele lately, especially regarding the drugs we've theorized to be used by them
from our different sources, we've managed to put together a pretty clear picture of who might be involved
so obviously we called down our assassins to keep an eye on the drug dealer we've determined to be their supplier
while we went to catch a member of their cult
I went in arbitrator-style, by which I mean brandishing an official ID which actually gave me no jurisdiction in the sector but I cunningly hid that part, and when the cultist asked for a search warrant, pulling out a gun
Player 1: Asking for a seach warrant is heresy
Me: she started running, I ran after her.
I was faster but she managed to jump out on the window because she fully knew what was gonna happen at this point.
she survived, so I beat her into submission via the flat of my electric sword
then dragged her back to her flat in an astonishing display of professionalism while continuing to brandish my arbitratorial ID
we've interrogated her there, and have received the name of her local ringleader, their method of communication, and the names of three other cultists.
then we hanged her and tried to make it look like suicide, but apparently nobody bought it.
Player 1: xD
Player 2: Why'd you do that?
Me: ...do what?
Player 2: Make it look like suicide. Was it to hide your tracks?
Me: I tried to make it look like it was the cult that killed her, because the last thing our investigation needed was a nosy arbitrator deciding that somebody is running around impersonating an arbitrator around these parts and that is obviously the most important issue on the table
so technically what I tried to make it look like was somebody trying to make it look like suicide.
someone comes in, asks questions, suspect flees, is dragged back, more questions are asked
if those aren't deemed to be satisfactory, that somebody would probably execute her for heresy instead of trying to make it look like suicide, thus it couldn't have been an arbitrator impersonator whose motive is in impersonating an arbitrator
(it totally could have been an arbitrator impersonator who is a cultist or some shit tho)
at least my logic went thusly
but this was around midnight and none of us were thinking particularly clearly.
Player 2: Ah I see now.
Me: so I called in more assassins to monitor the three people whose names we've received, especially regarding the established communication channel via the cult
while I went to spy on the ringleader alongside the scum
we've seen that he was making some calls, but the scum sucked at Tech-Use so we couldn't actually listen in
so the actual Tech-Priest had to bug the lines at the phone service provider instead
he was just in time for us to hear that the ringleader has apparently noticed us
and was hiring three hitmen by the names of Lil' Guy, Fish and The Cleaner to take care of us
in the meantime, the psyker decided this investigation stuff was boring and she went down into the Underhive to find a Lictor.
alone.
so the call was pretty funny
"there's four people following us, well okay, now only three, kill those"
anyways
the psyker has successfully found the Lictor she was looking for.
or rather, the Lictor has successfully found the psyker it was looking for.
it tried to pull her into grapple but missed
then the psyker realized the teensy-tiny little flaw in her master plan
so she went for a +2 PR Push and threw a Firestorm at it
it provoked 3 different psychic phenomena, two of which were actually rolls on the Perils of the Warp table
she ended up, among other things, paralyzed until successfully making a WP roll
but the total damage for the Firestorm was something like 6d10+5 in the end, and the thing couldn't even dodge because it had a blast radius of 6m thanks to her ungodly WP
so it was essentially deleted from existence
she tried to scoop up the dust and convince us she 1v1'd a Lictor while we were busy being actually useful, but nobody actually believed her
Player 1: So much for capturing it
Me: yupp.
at this point, we've deleted two Lictors out of existence
and managed to capture none
anyways
we've decided that hunting cultists while being hunted by underworld types in turn isn't exactly great
so I've had my acolyte take ringleader-watching duty while we were going to descend into the Underhive with the Scum and the Psyker to ask around about these nice gentlemen
who were apparently tasked with murderizing us now
Scum rolled Inquiry with +20 from our assists and +10 from Peer (Underworld)
between that, his flawlessly impenetrable disguise and his Fel 53, he was trying to roll under 83
nevertheless, he managed to get 98
so our investigation has basically looked like this:
> "hey dudes, do you know anything about some fellows called Fish, Lil' Guy and Cleaner?"
> "nope."
> "okay" *goes out, turns the corner and is greeted by three heavy stubbers*
they also hit us with the surprise bonus because we're apparently blind and deaf as well as stupid
so something like a +50 in total
I think I ate five hits, the scum took six
now the funny thing is, we're actually bad enough dudes to walk through that hail of gunfire with only superficial injuries.
we've made some successful dodges even with the -20 surprise penalty, and they hit us at limbs that were heavily implanted which gave us an armor bonus
so when the surprise round ended, the psyker lit them on fire, I exploded a guy with my sniper, and the scum cut down the rest with his autopistol.
Player 1: Neat
Me: we even managed to interrogate a guy and find out where some of these hitmen were hanging out at
then we tied him to his heavy stubber with his back to the... muzzle? and emptied the… magazine? because the hits may not have killed us but they still hurt and we wanted to discourage similar behavior in the future
while I was busy setting up modern art with his entrails, the others looted the two remaining heavy stubbers, albeit I have no idea why since nobody in the party can actually use them and we can't even sell them for shit
they're worth something like 180 thrones if I remember right, which is maybe like a clip of ammo for our more expensive guns.
anyways
realizing my compatriots are idiots, I called down a few of our security personnel who actually can shoot with these beasts
had them set up at the back entrance of the drinking establishment
then went in and started asking pointed questions about the three
soon enough, a report came in that a tattooed, hulking man tried to make an expeditious retreat via the back door
I figured out this must be Lil' Guy, so I had my men shoot him, then went up to the corpse, cut off his head and hid it in a burlap sack.
then we asked the pub owner which is Fish's favorite aquarium, and headed there
did the same thing with the heavy stubbers at the back entrance
walked in
figured out our guy is the mostly hairless dude with the bulging eyes and comically small mouth flanked by standard-issue goons
sat down to have a friendly chat
told him that we've heard he's been hired to kill certain people
showed him the head in the bag
asked him nicely whether he could possibly report that he's done the job, and also feel free to ratch up his prices since it was apparently dangerous enough that Lil' Guy bit the dust.
Player 1: :D
Player 2: Nice touch.
Me: he made a short phone call
we've heard the phrase "how many heavy stubbers?"
then he seemed keen to cooperate from that point on
so he reported his success and also set up the exchange with the money
this was the part when the plot thickened
because soon after the ringleader got the call, he made another, outgoing call
...but I'm getting ahead of myself
while we were busy inquiring, our acolyte has gotten himself into a shitroll-off
the GM was basically like "okay, your guy makes a move, 40..." "they respond... 50" "your guy tries to escape, 60", "okay they chase... 70", "okay, that was explosive, he's now trying to limp away... 80" "the rest of them chase... 90"
so some time after we've done the thing with the Fish, we've been informed that our acolyte, the one we sent to keep an eye on the ringleader, has been spotted
then there was a dramatic car chase on primetime television which somehow ended up with a fuel station blowing up
then he crawled into the sewers, taking out a bunch more cultists, but now he can't walk and could we possibly go pick him up
so we did that.
Player 1: How non-wasteful of you :p
Me: well he's the arbitrator. he had to be saved.
if it was the scum, I might have given it some thought.
Player 1: Ah, that makes him valuable
Me: yeah he's literally the only person aboard who has an arbitratorial ID which actually matches the Jericho Reach
later on, we've tried to make a fake but sadly our TP botched his trade (copyist) roll three times
so first he tried to make a fake
then he tried to actually carve the acolyte's ID up
(he's officially dead so it's not like he uses it anyway)
then he tried to mock up a temporary ID for someone who's been transferred
all failed
Player 1: :D
anyway
the ringleader made a call, reporting his success and that "they had no idea what was really going on"
and also requesting the termination of the loose ends at the money dropoff point, an abandoned temple ruin, suggesting that the other party "send elites, maybe even a few of his personal bodyguards"
the tech-priest actually traced the call with something like 7 successes, cutting through feeble electronic counter-measures and firewalls with the grace of an eight feet tall inhuman monstrosity made of metal and superheroic coding skills
and it turned out that the the person receiving the call, who was at this point bidding farewell to the ringleader with a "Heil Hayek", is none other than a local noble of considerable wealth and power!
(dun dun dun!)
I obviously proceeded to frothe over every tidbit of the conversation, alternatively trying to pull up everything the noble has done in the last 30 years to cross-referencing his holdings with the sites of the killings to frantically trying to remember what kind of cult might use the "heil hayek" callsign
Player 1: .........So how did the Lictor fit into this?
Me: the Lictor had nothing to do with it.
the Lictor is a tyranid vanguard organism
the sector is currently being nommed on by tyranids
Player 1: And it just happened to hunt people near an unrelated kidnap site
Me: no, that was a different kidnap site
the cult killings and the lictor killings were at different places
Player 1: I see
Me: anyways
I proceed to blow every single Forbidden Lore roll I made during the session
luckily, we've had a book on daemonology I liberated from the sector's last Malleus inquisitor after his ignoble death at the hands of some warp entity he somehow managed to summon, the idiot.
so I looked that thing up as well
[tea break, conversation resumes after]
so
cross-referencing the sites with the guy's holdings brought up nothing of importance
but we realized he was buying up and restoring old temples
a lot of them
so we went to inspect them for hidden heresies
and found the sign of what my research in the demon books confirmed to be the Horned Darkness, a warp entity of considerable power
in every single place
so we obviously did what every great and subtle Inquisitor would have done in our place
Player 2: You summoned the Horned Darkness?
Me: what.
I'm struggling to think what we could possibly have gained from that, aside from about +20 corruption points
speaking of which, the psyker also blew up during that session, costing me my long-held purity. Now I am tainted with the rest of them (corruption 12)
anyways
we compiled a list of the guy's heresies with proof and approached one of his rivals among the nobility and offered to sell
the adept we've met was sufficiently impressed
so impressed, in fact, that we've been granted an audience with the noble.
but in the meantime, we also decided to press the Ecclesiarchy for info about the disappearances in the catacombs
so we dressed up as the previous people we've been when we last came here
knowing us, they've asked whether we'd feel "adventurous" enough to try killing whatever haunts the catacombs
if compensation was to be offered
after some haggling, we've agreed on +1PF
by the time we've finished reading the accounts of all of the altar boys who've died to the catacomb creature, it was time for our audience.
Player 1: PF?
Is this DH or RT? :p
Me: DH uses the same mechanic, it just calls it influence
…so this was the time our Scum screwed the pooch
in disguising me, he rolled a 97, basically spreading a five-inch-thick glaze of mascara on my face and calling it a day.
I tried to salvage the situation by picking up a gas mask.
he also tried disguising the TP as a mini tank
and the psyker as a short, hairy man
basically space wolf-erine
what's amazing is that he succeeded
so we went in with the noble
I quickly realized that in my current disguise, I can't really speak because gas mask, and even if I could, nobody would take me seriously
the paranoid psyker decided the tea must be poisoned
the scum and the tech-priest can't socialize for shit
so we quickly made an impression as the biggest band of incompetents this side of the planet
the noble asked for our master, whom I've decided to impersonate via a combination of a subvocal microphone and the TP's ability to broadcast me
due to a combination of our unwillingness to give them the daemon book or anything else that could serve as proof that the thing our target is worshipping is, indeed, a daemon, our insistence for him to just take the info to the Ecclesiarchy for verification, and the fact that our Tech-Priest's cybernetic implants have made him Hulking size, the noble decided he must be a cleverly disguised Chaos Space Marine, and we're surely a chaos warband
I decided to let him run with the assumption and play along, because "I've worked with the Inquisition to take down a dangerous heretic" sounds a lot sexier at parties than "I've paid exorbitant sums of money to a chaos warband to get dirt on my political opponent", and thus it's more likely to make him keep his mouth shut
after some unsuccessful attempts at bartering, we've agreed on a sum to be paid and gave him the info we've gathered
then we wandered away to actually catch us a Lictor
while he arranged the money transfer
the details aren't particularly interesting this time
it nearly killed us
the Scum I'm pretty sure has only survived because the GM forgot about the Toxic trait on its weapons
for the first few rounds, at least
Player 1: Now I want to play DH again. And Exalted. Can we mix those games up into something uber good?
Me: it's called Deathwatch. the thing you want to play is Deathwatch.
anyways
it was pounded in the face with an autopistol, then ate a few fire bolts, then it was smacked around with my shock sabre
we got it down to -5 by the time we managed to reliably stunlock it
then we bound the fucker with chains and took it up to the ship where we've prepped an appropriate containment unit.
Player 1: At least it wasn't a Zoanthrope
(in b4 daemonhost Lictor)
Me: then we went back to the Catacomb issue while keeping the noble under surveillance to see what he does with the info he bought
as it turned out, the Catacombs had something
it was unwilling to attack groups, but the auspex clearly showed the presence of proteins that were xenos in origin
and we found the next victim
a mummified corpse with three bite marks on his neck, apparently drained of his most precious bodily fluids
our resident nerds hit the books to figure out what this thing could possibly be, while I turned to the D&D player's best friend in situations such as this: livestock.
I bought a goat, the Scum affixed a camera on its collar, and by the time the nerds determined a list of three species it could possibly belong to, we've confirmed the theory that it's only willing to hunt solitary prey but is actually pretty happy with anything warm-blooded
so it was time for our next step
we went in to retrieve the camera
as a group, it didn't attack us, so we were safe
the psyker double-checked just to be sure, and she determined this isn't actually a daemon.
then as soon as we had the camera, I had somebody jury-rig three krak grenades together with a detonator
sent the Scum to buy a new goat
then I pulled a MGS5 and had the tech-priest put the bomb inside the goat
after the operation was successful, I sent the poor thing inside the catacombs
and when the camera started shaking which we took to be a surefire sign of a xenos attack, I simply blew the thing up for a crit on two grenades and a grand total of something like 70 or 80 damage
this splattered the thing all over the walls, and led to our best after-action report ever
in which we describe our encounter with a previously undiscovered xenos species which we have no idea how they look like, what their threat levels are, how they are spreading or whether they possess any extraordinary abilities beyond "capable of painting an entire room red when hit with explosives", but we have DNA and protein samples taken from 12 different points of the room which are clearly of xenos origin, and a detailed chemical breakdown of those samples with the caveat that for the results to match, we recommend a 1:1 ratio mix with goat tissue samples
by this point, the time of the money exchange came up both for us and Fish
I actually sent my Raven Guard to the location beforehand and had him rig up some explosives to take out his would-be assassins
alas he failed to make it look like they managed to blow themselves up
but he still made short work of them
nevertheless, we didn't want the noble to catch Fish and possibly realize we're still on his trail, so we pre-emptively recruited him for the Inquisition
I had a little chat with him where I tried to ascertain whether he realizes the predicament he's in
he didn't
I told him not to worry about it, get a cabin near the other acolytes and just enjoy the chill for a few days
a few days later I got a vox message: "yesterday I saw a space marine walking through a corridor. is it too late for me to go back to being assassinated?"
Player 1: Why did you bother keeping Fish alive?
Me: because if they torture him for info before killing him, or if he decides he might get a pass if he gives us up, we lose the element of surprise.
remember, the cultists at this point think we've been killed.
and obviously since he told us where the exchange will happen, he expected us to actually go there and try to kill his boss, so he sure as hell wasn't gonna show up
which raises all kinds of questions
why would a scum skip payday
if they decided to look into the issue, we'd have lost our edge
Player 1: I'm not sure I agree, but fair enough
Me: anyways
at this point, days have passed without anything happening on the heretic noble front
so we sent an adept to at least get our money from the bank we've agreed on
he never came back
at this point, we started to suspect something might not have gone as planned
so we looked into requests for inquisitorial intervention sent through the usual channels
as it turns out, the noble actually has sent one
for the heretic "warband" he encountered
moreover, since said warband recommended for him to check the veracity of their claims with the Ecclesiarchy, and he managed to get his men to follow us back to our AdMech ship, he also started cooking up elaborate conspiracy theories about the involvement of both the Ecclesiarchy and the Mechanicus, suggesting a thorough investigation of both.
at this point, we had no choice but to involve the Inquisition.
enter "Inquisitor Vasquez", the result of six successes on the Scum's next disguise attempt, played by yours truly
Player 1: Hah, nice
Me: my chief weapons were the psyker all prettied up, the scum playing a guardman, and another guardsman as himself
I made a point of hiding the TP this time.
we pumped the noble for info
asked for the documents
played the worried citizen over the grave heresies within
then forwarded it to the local Ecclesiarchy person in charge of dealing with such things
ie. the same thing the noble was asked to do
then made a big show about having to board the Mechanicus vessel housing suspected heresies
and trusting the "small matter of investigating the veracity of the claims of these heretics" to the Ecclesiarchy
telling them to report every two hours
then we "boarded" our own ship
made a point of sitting down next to the Lictor's containment chambers to read a book on abstract Yu’vath concepts, so its howls could be heard on the channel every time the Ecclesiarchy personnel reported their progress, and occasionally even firing a bolt pistol or my hotshot lasgun
The Emperor's finest in action
then when they were done and managed to corner the little shit in his manor, we joined them, with some stylish burns and lasfire holes in my clothes
just to let them see we've been hard at work chasing the heretics they've sent us after
then we tried to catch the fucker, but of course he went out on the 11th secret tunnel instead of the 10 we already knew about and have posted a guy to guard
so we called for the headquarters of the local Ad. Astra Telepathica and asked their best diviner to tell us where he is
he wasn't that far away
but sadly that tunnel led to the Underhive
so by the time we managed to catch up to him, a Lictor ate him
(wow, there's a lot of Lictors in that Hive.)
so that was it for the session.
The Emperor's finest in action