Sinister Sacrilege: The End

(What, a post not about Starcraft? Heres-*BLAM*)

Last night was (sadly) the final session of the Dark Hereblam campaign, and so now that the plot is over I'm finally at liberty to discuss some overarching things I'd been trying the campaign. First though, a short synopsis.

• #4, played by Kory: A young, talented and most importantly brainwashed and intellectualy stunted assassin
• The Linear, played by Rome: A quiet, trigger-happy man from an out-of-touch space wreck where he was the law
• "Cantor" Remski, played by Jesse: A priest who spread his word through heavy raaawk and flames, and his passion through... flames.
• Callidon, played by Aaron: An optimistic psyker who didn't explode into Daemons, much to everyone's disappointment (especially my own)
• Daret, played by Max: A pragmatic techpriest hankerin' to be a cowboy nerfherder groxherder.

The story began on a Black Ship on its way to Terra (unbeknownst to the above) that suddenly suffered a massive failure, due to the 13th Black Crusade breaking out (again without the PCs knowing). In their investigation they eventually discovered that parts of the Guard unit stationed on board were in fact Genestealer cultists, and eliminated them and the Genestealers with extreme prejudice. After landing they were tasked with following up another section of the same tainted regiment that had landed days earlier, and eventually tracked down the group and avoided a large shoot-out in a saloon, but let the cultists escaped. They pursued, and found the cultists in a firefight with another group of cultists. The 'Stealer cult was finally killed off, and the PCs turned on the other cultists and killed many of them, but not before they finished summoning a Daemon. They managed through extreme cleverness to kill it off, and were sent home, but sent back the next day to continuing hunting down the heretic leaders, since reports of other daemon-summonings were occurring all across Terra. Despite failing abjectedly at investigative skills, they eventually determined found a safehouse of the heretics, which happened to be the main base at the moment. Despite an early attempt at subterfuge the infiltration again quickly turned into a run and gun fight, eventually culminating in an epic confrontation involving a number of heretics, 4 psykers, 4 arco-flagellents, and a heretic leader clad in power armor, as two warp circles seemed to be being summoned. Through a heroic sacrifice by #4 (and much to by chagrin), they managed to stop one of warp circles and kill all the heretics, preventing a flood of daemons from entering the Eternity Gate (the idea was that a single powerful summoning would be quickly noticed by the forces of Terra, but if dozens were occurring all over the planet they could only respond so quickly, so opening two in one location: one to the Warp, and the other (ideallly to the Golden Throne but Warp-magic is rarely so precise) to the Eternity Gate would cause massive massive problems). Fortunately for the Imperium "the Good Guys" managed to prevent this, and also dove heroically through the warp-portal after their fallen comrade, only to find him barely alive in front of the Eternity Gate, being stared at in shock by a number of Custodes and two Imperial Titans. Luckily they managed to avoid getting shot by a narrow margin, and forces arrived to apprehend them and take them away, and thus this chapter of their story ended.

I mean, in all likelihood they were all executed for extreme exposure to the Warp and Chaos, but hey, you never know. They were designed to be somewhere in between regular acolytes and a full inquisitor, and while the former would be executed, the latter definitely wouldn't. You decide ;-)

Anyway, the biggest thing I tried this time around was planning. For the "Inquisitor" campaign, I did a lot of pre-planning, had a cool story and arc planned out, etc. For this campaign, while researching Dark Heresy things online, I found a guide suggesting to not plan and just be spontaneous. I decided I would try it, for better or for worse.

Of course, it wasn't completely without planning. I had to have a little bit of an idea before each session, if only to make maps. But I was never planning ahead more than the immediate session. As stated, this session started aboard a ship. I like ships, because there is only a finite number of places to go and things to do, and I like genestealers, so that's what it was. It was a great way to get used to the system and try out the whole "be spontaneous" thing, so I let my PCs do whatever they wanted, and I think it was a success. We then got to Terra, and although I gave them a bit of direction, once they got to the first location they were all on their own, ending up with things like The Linear pointing a gun at an innocent guard's head to wake him up or the group deciding to rappel up a building to avoid spiders and try to snipe the driver of a tank. I think overall the last few sessions went the smoothest, since I had figured out what exactly did need to be planned and what didn't, and also was familiar with the system and what I needed to do/not do (like not show models on the board before they explored a room). I think we had some great moments that would not have occurred had I not planned ahead, and although I was slightly panicky at times wondering what I  was going to do this session, I always figured out something, and despite the complete lack of fore-planning I think the overarching story is remarkably coherent. This style meant I was able to deal with PC spontaneity well, since I was being spontaneous too.

Another facet of this style was hopefully unexpected by my players, and that had to do with a questionnaire I had them innoncently fill out early on. I held off using it for the first few sessions, but the entire time I had a list like this:

Ways to mess with PCs

-Make a saloon for Daret

Make Grox for him to catch

-Bring #4’s master back

-Bring Boris and Slant in for Callidon

Bring out Catachan Mega-Bees for Callidon

-Arcoflagellents for Remski

Noise Marines for Remski

Transport back to Bio Anthem for Linear

-For fun bring back Brutus, Slant, and/or Grant

The ones marked with a hyphen I actually accomplished, and had the session gone one further I had been contemplating something like the Warp Gate contaminating them but sending them to the Bio Anthem, where they'd have to search for a cure on the Linear's old home while fighting off things like (you guessed it) Catachan Mega-Bees. I think the coolest example of how this worked out well (well, a number of them were cool, but this was was also rail-breaking) was having #4's master reappear an Arco-flagellent. I felt given his master's crimes, such a punishment would have made sense, and since it's hard to perform I figured the likelihood of being sent to Mars to have it done was pretty high, and then to be shipped to Terra (and then stolen) not unfeasible. Remski also being terrified of them helped a lot. When I introduced the fact that one of the "scary guys" in the back was also #4's master, I didn't prompt Kory to do anything about it, I just let him know. He responded with an excellent piece of role-playing where he froze for a number of rounds (prompting much concern from his teammates) and apparently he ended up flipping a coin as to what #4 would do, and got the better result, that of charging his master (and ALL of the remaining combatants) and setting off 3 frag grenades on his person, killing everyone within an 8 meter radius (i.e. ALL of my enemy NPCs). He also disrupted both warp circles, but a well-played Drama Card meant he instead got flung through the portal to the Eternity Gate, which had coincidentally just finished being made. 

The irony was that besides the leader and the arcos (the former having been laughing the entire time) there was just one apiece of the heretics and psykers, and the next turn I actually would have unleashed the arcos, and the turn after that was when the Gates would have finished manifesting, and the Leader would have led a swarm of daemons into the Imperial Palace where an epic showdown between the Custodes, Titans, and swarms of Daemons would have taken place, with the PCs stuck in the middle of it all. But an excellent piece of role-playing prompted by my dickery stopped all that. I'm actually incredibly pleased with it, since despite losing a cool set-piece idea it was a really cool martyr moment that stopped a horrible horrible sacrilege from occurring. And I think now that my players read this they will also be happy they managed to stop that :-P

Finally, on the subject of drama cards, they were much more appreciated than I expected. At the end of one session I offered either one player a fate point (which are far more versatile and, I thought, more useful) or two players a drama card (which can be sometimes bad and always situational). I thought it would be a tough choice, but there was hardly any debate and they went straight for the two drama cards. I'm curious whether had I offered two of either which way they would have chosen. This may however just my players sharing my enjoyment of the drama cards'...well, drama.

Anyway, I know I have more to say about this campaign, but I've already written a lot, so I shall save the rest for another day. I enjoyed DMing the campaign a whole lot, and my players state they did as well, so I hope someday in the future we may once again embark on a quest to rid the world of evil and redeem all the bad guys ;-)

-HTMC