Lies, Damn Lies

Dark Heresy, Lifeblood preserves-Session 3

Story

With the chaplin stealing their prisoners, the party saw no alternative but to head home, which they did, dodging out of the way of police patrols which had been somewhat increased thanks to the loud firefight they had just caused.

Sleeping in the hotel, the morning revealed that the space marine had headed off into the desert. Checking his room, they discovered a data slate implying that another space marine was calling out the Chaplin for battle, giving the co-ordinates.

Deciding to head after this, the party hired a ramshackle vechile and drove into the desert, where after a day of travel they saw a large black building in the distance with three vechiles in front of it. Closer inspection saw 6 gentlemen there, one of whom was laying a large amount of charges around the building. The party decided to lay in wait and see what they were doing. Sadly, Dmitri's abilities of concealment were rather lacking, and combat broke out.

The party defeated their enemies, with the help of the psyker taking the form of a demon.... Investigating the building revealed Tomias standing over the bodies of several people, who were drained of blood. Tomias managed to get control of himself for long enough to tell the party that Raphael had tricked him, the ghostflower triggered "the rage". He insisted that they needed to contact Mariella, who could explain more. Then he shot himself.

Reflections

I enjoyed running this session, although the combat was a bit silly. I suspect a few extra bits of cover so the party could advance would have been a bit more fun. The fact that the players can only move a maximum of about 12 metres each turn meant that when Nick charged the enemy it was more a charge of the light brigade than an actual attack....

I had trouble working out how this session was going to work. I knew that Raphael was going to trick Tomias into a position where the ghostflower would activate the black rage, but I then needed the party to discover this. Discovering Tomias dead would leave the party relatively clueless, but if he was alive I couldn't work out WHY. After coming up with multiple ways of telling the scene, it finally occured to me that Raphael might want to avoid fighting an insanely strong space marine chaplin, and would instead blow him high sky instead. As Raphael has other business to get sorted, it made sense for him to leave as well, especially as he believed that no-one would be following Tomias.

I think I probably could have put more thought into the anagram for Tomias to make it a proper problem, but never mind- making it purely skill based was a little lame, but eh.

posted by Mr K @ 9:08 am