Friday, February 27, 2009

Dark Heresy: Sessions 4-5

The players awoke to the delightful sound of gun fire. The Strophe's house was under attack. Rapidly getting out of their rooms, a rather brutal combat emerged, where Trantor was thrown bodily backwards by one of the assailants. Getting their act together, the players managed to defeat enough mercenaries to drive them from the building. Questioning revealed that the mercenaries were employed by the same organisation, pressure point, as before.

Deciding time was of the essence, the acolytes headed for Ambulon after a days rest. They were rather impressed with the extremely weird turtle like city, especially Mordecai, who practically wanted to have sex with it.

Landing, the party met their contact on the city, and then went to meet the mysterious oracle.

The oracle gave the party some information, giving them an understanding of the force manipulating the joyous choir, a fairly evil bunch of mercenaries by the name of the Serrated Querry. With this in mind, the party went to their quarters to leave some possessions, and then most headed to the joyous choir temple.

Upon approach, the acolytes noticed Theodosia wondering around, giving orders. Getting closer revealed that he had not heard back from the mercenary team yet, which gave them a chance to snoop around. And snoop they did.

Splitting up in the temple, Trantor and Enoch went down a short corridor (through a door marked "no entry"). They were confronted by a Joyous Choir official, who, after some attempts of obfuscation on the players part, demanded identification. So they chopped his head off. This left them.. somewhat covered in blood, so they dragged the corpse into a room and hid in there to clean up.

At this point, Ravion came to the corridor to see it filled with blood and the acolyes missing. Seeing the trail leading to the door, he burst in with gun ready... and Enoch made him spasm, making a laser shot fire into the air.

Pulling the door shut, the acolytes drew their guns and prepared for discovery.... Ravion, however, had an idea, and burst into the corridor, claiming that he was searching for the killers. Sadly the two autogun wielding security men were not exactly holding to that viewpoint, and ordered him to get down on the ground.

At which point, Trantor tackled him, and pointed a gun to his head. Convinced by this performance, the two men wondered over to get posession of the supposed heretic.

At which point Trantor knocked them aside, Enoch jammed their weapons, and fighting began in earnest.

A brutal and dangerous fight happened in the narrow corridor, but at the end the acolytes emerged victorious. Calling to Mordecai, they heard he was only a few minutes away, so they decided to lay an ambush for the guards still in the main church.

Sadly, this didn't go brilliantly for them, as Ravion acted with... less subtletly than he should have, and the guards opened fire, taking down Enoch.

Mordecai arrived soon after, bringing the magistratum with him, and his added assistance dealt with the guards.

With the magistratum there to secure the temple, the acolytes headed down. Finding a locked door, Mordecia attempted to open it with some subtlety, but sadly wasn't able to cut the lock away very easily. Ravion attempted to kick the door in... and failed miserably. Finally, with a rather exasperated expression, Trantor took Enoch's shotgun and blew the door open. A grenade was hurled into the room, and then the party dived through. Sadly their bumbling had attracted attention, and they were met with a hail of fire which sent Ravion collapsing to the ground.

Revealed was a room clearly used for surgery, but with one... modiofication. It was much huger than it should have been, with weird writing scribed on the ceiling. It also contained Theodosia.

The final combat resolved with Theodosia unconcious, Ravion nearly dead, and a set of melta bombs ready to blow the building sky high.

Running away, they were able to secure the heretic, and question him on the Serrated Querry. Information gained was mostly a confirmation of what they had learned so far, and while they had clearly ended this particular scheme, it was implied that the Serrated Querry was still very much active.

Reflections:

It's always fun to hurt your players! I'll move to the final fight in a minute, and talk about the Oracle, which is a character that annoys me. The Oracle has information on the Serrated Querry, and seems to believe they are linked to the Choir. Why hasn't it told anyone? In a WFRP setting, such a character is more believable because of the lack of over imposing central government, but in 40k, such a withholding of important information stinks of heresy- while the Adeptus Mechanicus are not a faction to anger, it strikes me as a little weird.

The final fight was awesome fun. The book provides you with little detail, and just left me to work out what was happening. I wanted the players to have a chance to explore the temple, then come back with reinforcements, so they could fight Theodosia alone, and fully equipped. Things... did not work out exactly as planned. In particular, the kill happy nature of my players was a little.. ridiculous, but never mind, it turned into a rather entertaining motif. While there was nothing about the destruction of the temple, it made sense to me that Theodosia would attempt that if caught, and added some enjoyable urgency to the closing scenes. Full auto fire is proving exceptionally effective.. I have a feeling the players will be using it a lot, especially with the wonder of man-stopper bullets!

There was a moment where I thought the party were going to get killed off, but the extra contingincies I had planned (reinforcements, servitor control), worked in the end. I think we managed the right level of lethality for the final encounter of an arc.

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Hah!

Catching Ireland's worse driver can be a difficult thing to do..

Monday, February 16, 2009

The incredibles, and Brad Bird's philosophy

I love the Incredibles, but was always somewhat confused about it's message. The evil villains long term plan was... to make everyone special? Confusing. This article sums up a lot of my thoughts on his philosophy. I still love the film, and always will, it's a brilliantly constructed piece of work, with some amazing set pieces as well as brilliantly defined characters. I'm just not sure I'll agree with it's message.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Dark Heresy: Purge the Unclean- sessions 2 and 3

Writing blogs is hard! Anyway, a round up of the last two sessions, as I forgot about the last one. The acolytes, having been fully prepared, headed to Lady Borella's party. After spending an excruciating amount of time talking to some npc s of little note, they managed to accomplish their main objectives of obtaining an invite to the Alabaster court, as well as learning more about the drug facrosia. They also were suspicious of Malene Trun, a middle hiver at the party, and Siprit Daneen, a curious gentleman who appeared to be investigating the choir himself.

The next day the acolytes went to meet Orday, who had turned up with the data- only to be shot down by a tech heretic of some sort, who left with some rapidity. The players attempted to pursue, but were set upon by several hired thugs who delayed them enough for the assailant to escape.

They did, however, manage to capture and interrogate one of the thugs. He knew very little, merely that he was a member of an organisation called Pressure point, and he worked for hire.

The next day some investigation was carried out at Pressure point, but thats to a rather inept line of attack, little was discovered. More was found by talking to Laurent Strophes, who knew a little bit about it- a contract mercenary house of some sort.

Enoch attempted to find out more about Malene Trun, but discovered fairly little, other than her being mostly well liked. Sadly the scary psyker failed to charm the middle hiver....

Meanwhile Mordecai had a mission of his own. He found an adeptus mechanicus outpost, where he met with technomancer Lagos, who agreed to help fix his mechandrite for free... provided the tech priest was willing to further the cause of machine god. Initially his mission would be merely to protect and attempt to deliver any tech found during his missions, but should Mordecai find himself in the Inquisition's favour... well then things might be different.

Their business concluded, the party went to the alabaster court. There they witnessed first hand a brutal incident of "spurring", which resulted in the death of an underhiver. Taking offence to this, Ravion ended up being challenged to a duel, which he won, but losing control of himself, caused a far more deadly wound than he might have intended. While this occurred, Trantor and Stilgar scouted the facilites. They didn't find anything particular, but did manage to confirm that farcosia probably wasn't being produced at that location.

The party proceeded uneventfully, until about an hour before midnight when the assailant before appeared, heavily robed to hide his modifications. Seeing this the party attempted to listen in on the conversation, but upon seeing them Theodosia pulled away in shock and began to speak angrily at Shoal. Shoal then let slip that there was something important located on Ambulon. Enraged, Theodosia pulled Shoal away from the party.

Thoughts

Both sessions went pretty well. The latter had much less progress than expected- the party had several good ideas about where to investigate which weren't really covered in the book. Some of these were false leads- they tried to track Orday, but realistically there was no way for them to find out anything. Other routes may have been more succesful, but blunders meant nothing was found. I was a little disappointed that the party failed to find anything particular at the Alabaster court. It wasn't vital, but it would have added to what they've already worked out and probably confirm most of their suspicions.

I enjoyed Mordecai's deal with the adeptus mechanicus, in character and enjoyable stuff, I shall have to flesh out Logos a little more, as he shall definitely play more of a part if this campaign goes on.

Rejoice is actually going at quite a fast pace- if this session had gone a bit faster we would have been done in 4, but as it is I'm pretty sure 5 sessions will do it, which is good.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

The Wire

After endless critical recommendation of it, and me talking about wanting to watch it, my parents bought me the first season of the Wire for christmas. It is amazing. Telling the story of one sprawling investigation that everyone wants to close down, even the heroes are wonderfully flawed- McNulty drinks far too much and is far too hot headed, Greggs (I have no idea how people's names are spelt) beats the crap out of someone for punching a police. The most interesting thing about it is that many flawed people are introduced who one presumes are just an excuse for the viewer to hate... and yet pretty much everyone is allowed more depth and complexity and that. People you expect to be idiots throughout turn out to be have far more layers than you give them credit for.

It's an unforgiving series- you need to pay attention most of the time or you will lose track of it, but it is so worth it. I will definitely be getting and watching the next 4 seasons.

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