Lies, Damn Lies

Dark Heresy, Lifeblood Preserves-Session 2

Story

The party were woken up early to be met with Terronius, who informed them that not only had another murder occurred, but the police were claiming they had caught the perpetrator of the crimes.

Setting off to investigate the culprit, the party decided they did not want to reveal that they came from the inquisition. Instead the psyker played with the mind of the guard at the desk, and they pushed past, into the corridors. However, upon reaching the cells they discovered another guard, who pushed the alarm before the party could stop him. At this point Trantor decided that it was time to declare some authority.

The guards were almost instantly cowed by the legendary authority of the Inquisition, and became extremely helpful. The party were led through to the culprit.

Raelis was slumped in the corner, his body showing clear signs of a recent beating. Rousing him he revealed fangs sharpened to a fine point. Raelis was clearly far gone into heresy, and while he stuck to his initial story to begin with, a dose of psykic power quickly dissuaded him from continuing. He told them that on the appropriate night someone would mark the pub that the cult were to get their newest victim from. They would drug said victim, then lead him back to be fed on, and dump him in the chosen location. Raelis had never been back to the base, so had no idea where it was, but told them that the attack would be occurring that night. Dmitri, believing that Raelis had told them all the party needed to know, executed him.

The party then headed off, to look at the body and the place where it was left, which confirmed what they had seen already. They then went about finding the next location. This didn't take too long, St Drusus' Hammer was marked. The party then decided to split up, with most waiting in the pub, and the other two going across the street to watch from above in a sniper post. Quintus, the assassin and Mordecai the tech priest were chosen for this. Qunitus managed to convince the owner of the shop across the street (Carmail's gun shop), to allow them to rent a room, managing to imply along the way that he was intending to have a rather intimate encounter there... which made Carmail somewhat surprised when he saw the other gentleman was a tech priest....

The party set up for the evening. Eventually the cultists turned up, and sizing Trantor up as a target, made their move. After a while, believing Trantor had been thoroughly drugged, the cultists led him out of the pub. Enoch and Dmitri followed, and after a short while Trantor made his move. Both Enoch and Qunitus opened fire, and the cultists went down very quickly, with two managing to be took alive. Deciding to take them to the alms house, the party headed off.

However, before they could reach it, they were confronted with the extremely intimidating sight of a space marine chaplin, a man in black power armour with a skull painted on the helmet, a power field covering him. He demanded the players put down their weapons and hand over the prisoner. At this point a women dressed in black stepped out of the shadows.

"Thank you Mariella, you have been most helpful."
"My pleasure Tomias"

The players handed Tomias their id, but while he accepted that they were from the inquisition, he claimed that "this was a matter purely for the blood angel's chapter to deal with,". However, Tomias said that they could meet with him tomorrow at his room in the Venerate.

Needing only one cultist, Tomias executed the other, and left with the mysterious Mariella, commenting that they could interrogate the prisoner on her ship.

Reflections

It's an interesting experience, giving players more choice, as they can do things you don't expect. For example, the players suggested that they might move the red handkerchief from the Hammer, which would have been an interesting development. I suspect in that instance I might have used Mariella to stop them doing so, as she had been tailing them for the entire day. Indeed, Mariella, who originally was going to play a less active role in the adventure, proved to be very worth involving, as she enabled me to adapt to the players attacking the cultists outside the pub, rather than following them to their destination, as I had expected.

I really enjoyed this session, it was good to see the players basically getting to choose what they do, and how they planned to deal with any particular situation. I managed to adapt to it reasonably well, even when Dmitri randomly killed the prisoner, for which he got a corruption point.

Labels: dark heresy, roleplaying

posted by Mr K @ 1:44 pm