The Force of Heresy: Prologue

Excerpt from Inquisitor Wynd's private diary

Unpublished, declared Damnatio Memoria by order of Lord Inquisitor Schuld

…The Warp defies explanation. Although we, especially those of us in the Inquisition, like to believe we have corralled even a small segment of its powers, beaten it into submission, and now can harness its use, such beliefs are fallacious to the core. Should the majority of the Imperial citizens ever comprehend how little we understand of Warp travel, and how loosely deciphered the Geller phenomenon is. Should such understanding ever surface, we could bid farewell to the notion of any sane Imperial citizen ever stepping foot off his homeward.

With that said, anyone who ventures into the Void certainly understands the risks of Warp travel: the possibility to arrive centuries later, to be thrown off-course by magnitudes difficult to comprehend, and of course the possibility of losing all-hands to some unmentionable horror that had been patiently salivating at the very edge of the Field (if such fields can be said to truly have edges, which is another point entirely). However, such instances are usually caulked up to the vagaries of the Warp rather than our understanding of Warp travel, but any brief introspection upon this notion rapidly reveals the core flaw. 

The important point that anyone seeking to research the Warp and its related phenomena must understand is that nothing is impossible when it is involved. Full stop. If there is indeed an exception to every rule, that exception is to be found in the Warp. Nothing forbids an individual from amassing power greater than the sum of all armies currently fighting in the galaxy. Nothing stops an entire Segmentum from suddenly flowing directly into the Warp. Nothing stops the laws of the universe as we know them from suddenly becoming outdated.

Why, I wouldn't be surprised if some extraordinary Warp-related events happen on a near-daily basis. Take, for instance, the common occurrence of ships disappearing into the Warp. Various theories exist, of course, the most common being time-delay, and the other being total destruction. However, both are hard to prove conclusively, so chances of something else happening are, well, possible. Perhaps the ships are sent back in time, or to an alternate dimension. Perhaps they reform to a new shape, utterly unrecognizable from its prior form. Or perhaps some are nearly misplaced, thrown far enough away that they are good as lost. If the Warp is capable of ejecting a vessel on the entire opposite side of the galaxy, what is there to stop it from hurling it to another galaxy, much as the Tyranids are known to have made their way to ours? Perhaps some ships declared missing in action still exist, fighting for their lives on alien soil, in some galaxy far, far away…

Unending Appetite: Mini-Review Rampage #6

Although I have managed to cause a significant dent in the Beast that is my backlog of things to review, it still remains strong. Thus I soldier on, maintain a brave facade despite my trembling within, and continue to do what must be done. Be warned: the following set contains much more raw emotion that the previous few installment.

You have been warned.

The Crafting of Worlds: Addolorata

So I'm currently in the beginning stages of planning for a winter Black Crusade campaign of 3-5 sessions in length, which naturally means a lot of background, character, and rules creation, some of which is sharable to the general public. The following is the setting details for the players, who have already seen it but I figured I'd post as well because, well, why not? Feel free to give feedback. :-D

The Cycle of Fate: Decisions

His office seemed exactly as he'd left it; doubtless the servitors had cleaned it daily in his absence. None of the security systems seemed tripped, and the data terminal didn't seem to contain any urgent messages, for once. The inbox also seemed to have messages slowly trickling in as his retinue reported in their status.

All actually seemed calm, or as calm as any sector of the Imperium was. Naturally countless minor threats, cults, and conspiracies, but nothing too urgent, and more importantly nothing he needed to handle personally. He sat himself down at his desk, and withdrew the small data disks from him pocket and inserted them into the concealed ports.

Ghostly letters and symbols hovered above his desk. To anyone else it would look a confusing mess, but he read it easily enough: it was his personal cipher, which included not just substitution but also multiple languages. No cipher was perfect, but it was secure enough for the short time he had been transporting the documents.

He had transcribed the papers on the long journey through the Warp. One of them would have to be discarded utterly and forgotten, while the survivor would be submitted to the Ordo libraries as the official record of the mission. It would also serve as the template for his official report, a report he would have to submit soon; the Ordo officials were already hounding him, especially after the Astartes and the Assassin refused to speak of the matter. He sighed.

He brought one into focus. The paper spoke of a normal landing on a seemingly peaceful planet, only to be assaulted by huge, ferocious beasts that slaughtered the Guardsmen by the score and were immune to most of the weaponry on hand. It went on about the ordered retreat from the massed beasts, abandoning the transports to their ruin as they sought safer ground, and the seemingly endless march as the group quickly lost member after member with few kills in return. It spoke of the leadership of the Marines, as they controlled the frantic rabble of the terrified Guardsmen and attempted to still finish their mission; it spoke of the Assassin Veer being the first one to discover the weak points of the giant reptiles.

It went on at length about the various deadly flora and fauna the group encountered as they trekked across the planet, losing fewer and fewer Guardsmen as they became more adept with dealing with the various predators. It described when they finally found the crashed Imperial vessel that had likely been lost in the Warp thousands of years ago, and had impacted the planet, exploding its Warp drive and triggering the event. Satisfied, the group returned to their transports, only to find them wrecked by their beasts in the absence. The report explained the horrible slaughter as the group attempted to hold off the seemingly endless wave of beasts as they waited for the final transport to arrive, losing almost every Guardsmen in the process, with the rest dying of their wounds while leaving orbit, including the Librarian Oblinius, whose mighty psychic shield gave them enough time to escape.

It continued for several pages, describing the feats of heroism performed by all present, and recommending several commendations for the survivors, particularly Vindicare Veer for his tireless protection.

The report said many, many things, and in terms of specifics they were all completely false.

A knock at the door. A messenger entered, and politely but firmly informed him that the council was expecting his presence. The boy stood there, obviously expecting him to stand up and follow to the chambers. Instead he received a stark stare and an arched eyebrow; the page took the hint and left quietly. He would surely inform the council, which meant there wasn't much more time.

He tabbed over to the other report, which described the actual events of the mission. He had naturally been present for most of them, although was only dimly aware of what had occurred in the mountain towards the end. The Space Marines had been reluctant to speak at length about it, and while Veer had been quite pleased to relay the events to him (saying he was happy to talk about it before he forgot) the young man's enthusiasm was matched by his erratic story-telling ability, and discerning the proper narrative was somewhat difficult. Regardless of the clarity, the implications of the report were clear to him, and would be to the council as well.

He shut down the system, and extracted the two disks, taking one in each hand. It was a hard decision, to be sure. On the one hand, as prescribed by the Ordo regulations, his course was clear, and his duty more so. On the other hand, he had technically sworn an oath. In addition, while the Eldar activities were surely dangerous, he questioned whether it was a bigger threat than the myriad menaces that currently threatened the realm. Every ship, every soldier, every weapon was precious to the Imperium, and even the relatively small task force that would be required to eradicate the threat on the planet could be of invaluable assistance in half a dozen theaters he could think of off the top of his head. Then again, while he was an Inquisitor, technically the decision was not his alone to make.

His mind raced, calculating, analyzing, and doing everything but coming to a decision. He didn't have long, though: the page would be back soon, and likely with an armed "escort."

He opened a drawer and withdrew a small pistol and a pair of tongs. He grabbed the disk with the tongs, and held it out far away from him. With his other hand he pulled the trigger, and looked away as the searing heat disintegrated the data drive and melted the ends of the tongs.

For better or for worse, he had made his decision.

He exited his chambers, opening the door only to see the page's fist swing foolishly through the air as it missed the door that was no longer there. He made eye contact with the guard sergeant.

"Shall we?"

They took off in a brisk pace, walking towards a chamber that would ultimately decide the fate of a world. But really, he thought, what was one world amongst the thousands of thousands in the galaxy?

Perhaps nothing, he thought. Perhaps everything. Only time would tell what fate would bring.

(-HTMC)

The Cycle of Fate: The Second

He could appreciate the irony, at least. Not seconds before he had downed the third one, and had begun to feel confident he could take down the rest. It had taken several hours of careful stalking and patience, and things were looking promising, and then it turned out he might as well have stayed on the hill.

He dissolved back into the shadows and watched the orks practically disintegrate under the withering assault of the Marines; the dumb brutes likely didn't have time to even register the threat before meeting their demise. He also spotted the assassin sneaking towards the Stormraven, and was momentarily baffled. A closer glance revealed he was apparently without his Exitus weaponry: that would definitely explain it.

He grimaced. The temple operatives had a reputation of being fiercely attached to their tools, and Veer's were probably being hauled off to Emperor-knew-where by one of the dozens of orks who had made off with the transport's innards. Veer had seemed fairly stable, so perhaps he could still be used, but then again countless tales bounced through the ordo houses of psychotic assassins. He'd have to keep an eye on the young killer.

The Astartes seemed to be finishing up, and to his eyes seemed unharmed. Only one wearing armor though, and the rest seemed to only have one of two pieces of the wargear. More bad news. He knew that the Marines also set high store by their armaments and armor, and while he doubted they would do anything but their best, he was sure the loss would be weighing on their minds.

One problem at a time, though.

No sooner had the last ork been downed when the team rushed into the Stormraven, presumably to find their equipment. A grimace crossed his face; maybe the Emperor would smile and they would find something, but based off the amount of boxes that the orks had hauled off, he suspected not much was left within the transport. As he stalked forwards, he offered up a small prayer; they could use every bit of help they could get, if the ork presence was as large as he feared.

He briefly considered going in to help, but ultimately decided he probably couldn't do anything that the Astartes couldn't. Instead, he seated himself on a nearby log, and began mentally reviewing all of the facts and knowledge on orks he had accumulated over the years. One of the expired orks lay a stone's throw from his seat, and he blinked once. The now magnified corpse was easy to examine, and after some mental cross-referencing came to some conclusions that confused him. The skull formation and clan trappings suggested feral orks, as did the blade of the "choppa" and the fraternal interaction he had observed earlier. However, the slugthrowers they had employed looked startlingly more advanced than were typical of the feral subtype, and looked closer to the more traditional firearm employed by the "modern" ork.

An intriguing puzzle. Perhaps some genetic leap, or just genuine advancement? Maybe some spacehulk had crashed on the planet in the distant past, or conceivably there was another, more advanced culture on the planet... Earlier he would have discounted the possibility, but the Imperial survey team had stated there was no sentient life on the planet. While it was possible the orks had somehow arrived after the survey had been conducted, that seemed unlikely.

He had been unsettled by the limited amount of information at the start of the mission, but it was only now he realized how deep the well of ignorance went.

The Space Marines were finally exiting the wreckage, and he was pleased to note that they seem to have found a few items. He approached Veer, who turned around at the last second and greeted him. He stayed on the periphery while the Astartes discussed what to do next, unsure of whether he should interject. Eventually one of them asked his opinion, and he stated what little he could; he was as in the dark as them, for the most part.

Eventually they settled on a plan, and the Marines seemed confident enough, although he had a hard time imagining such warriors being unconfident. They struck off, and he trailed behind, hoping against hope that no more surprises were waiting in their immediate future. His mind turned back to the information he had absorbed over the past few hours, and his analytically-trained mind set to work. The stealthy movement came naturally, and only someone who knew him well could tell his thoughts were far, far away...

The Cycle of Fate: The Crash

Wait.

That was something he could do. Stillness was far easier to achieve, especially compared to the wretchedness of escaping the sizzling hulk of metal that had minutes prior been a transport.

Observe.

That was another thing he could do, something he had honed in his profession. He tried to take everything in: the cackle of flames and its associated stench were hard to ignore, but his training allowed him to do just that and focus on other aspects of his surrounding.

Analyze.

Obviously some kind of a sparse forest with large, thick trees on a slightly rolling valley. He thought that he could even make out some kind of reptile in some of the trees, although the wind and rain made him slightly less than certain. Although the smoldering promethium masked practically everything else, with his face close to the dirt he could take in the earthy perfume, and noted the slight differences that set it apart from other, similar worlds he had visited. The scans had indicated that the atmosphere and environment were not dangerous, and he had taken the usual cocktail of preventative medicines, but it was always reassuring to breath the air and not feel his lungs constrict, as had happened on Pneunym IV back--

Concentrate.

Slipping like that was unlike him. Perhaps the crash had disoriented him more than he had realized. He began to take a mental stockpile of himself. His weapons and equipment were miraculously intact; that had been the first thing he checked. Likewise he didn't sense any broken bones or ruptured organs, and his bio-signatures seemed to confirm this. Bruises and cuts everywhere, naturally, but he was long since past noticing or caring about such trivial wounds. After all, compared to the pain that cursed xenotech blade Inquisitor Bianchi had shoved up his--

Concentrate!

Now he was truly worried. This was entirely unlike him, to get so distracted in an emergency. He was supposed to be calm, supposed to be rational, supposed to be an observer, and one cannot truly observe when one's inner eye is someplace else entirely.

Focus.

That's what he needed to do. He drew his pistol and quickly checked it over before arming it, and likewise flexed his glove and was pleased to see it bend smoothly. He rechecked his surroundings, and was pleased to note that his survival instincts seemed to have functioned correctly despite the crash, as he was situated in the ideal viewpoint to observe his surroundings. He tested his mic again, but either his vox was completely broken or his allies were not currently in a condition to respond. Both thoughts were troubling.

Wait.

He pulled off his cloak to ensure the fires had not damaged it, and was satisfied to see that the cameleoline was undamaged. He flung the smooth, water-like material over himself as he laid back down, and felt it naturally flow to cover and conceal him. Unfortunately, the rest of his equipment would require a tech-priest to determine whether it still functioned; perhaps the one known as Ceros would deign to inspect the pieces. Something was missing, though, although he couldn't quite--

React.

The sudden movement would have made a less-experienced man jump, but he was trained in concealment by some of the best his ordo had to offer. Instead, he flicked only his eyes over to observe whatever had suddenly appeared, and only as he was pleasantly surprised to see his loyal familiar flapping towards him did he realize what had been missing. The crash had been fortunate indeed, and Kwoth quietly settled besides him and then held perfectly still. Some of the others questioned his choice of the psyber-raven, fearing it might prove too much of a conspicuous characteristic, but if they had seen how invaluable the little creature had been in coordinating the action that had resulted in such a decisive diplomatic victory over the Uwanäri they undoubtably would--

Concentrate!


His familiar flared its wings in response to the sudden surge of emotion, but he managed to eventually quell the feelings, although it was swiftly replaced with the unbearable weight of an emotion he rarely felt: uncertainty. The planning had not even considered such a catastrophe so early into the mission, and he never would have imagined being so completely cut off from the team. What the Marines would do in such a situation was unclear to him; his dealings with the Astartes prior to this endeavor had been marginal.

Observe.

With nothing else to do, he reverted to his base state. The fierce storm that had brought down the impressive bulk of the Stormraven seemed to be dying down and he noticed tendrils of smoke seemed to be rising from the wreckage. He felt a faint glimmer of his usual confidence begin to reassert itself; with such an obvious trail, he was certain the Astartes would be able to locate the crash site, and then things would be much clearer.

Analyze.

Of course, that meant anything else with even a remote amount of intelligence would also likely be honing in on his location. Although the survey stated no intelligent lifeforms had been detected, the storm that had created this predicament seemed thoroughly unnatural, and he was utterly certain that this remainder of this mission would be anything like he had expected. He would just have to wait, and hope his team appeared before anything else.

Wait.

That was something he could do.

Return of Giant Backlog: Mini-review Rampage #2

So now that I'm home on break, I'm ripping through various media and finishing up and starting a lot of series. This naturally means I have consumed a large amount of games, music, books, and shows, and once again I've accumulated a large backlog of things that I want to get my thoughts down about, but don't necessarily feel I have enough to say to warrant a full post on its own (In retrospect, I could do one every other day and actually get in the habit of writing more often, but whatever). I promise more serious posts will eventually be coming around...eventually >_>.

Seeds of Heresy: A Review of Horus Rising

Visiting a oft-mentioned but never described thoroughly time period in a series if always a risky maneuver. Perhaps the most notable example would be the Clone Wars in Star Wars; a series of battles that seems to be on everyone's minds and seems to have had extreme consequences, but for the longest time Star Wars fans could only guess as to what exactly happened. Eventually though, as we all know, Episode 2 and associated content came out and described the setting in detail, and naturally many people were disappointed. As is often the case, leaving something amazing to a viewer's/reader's imagination is often better than anything that could actually be made.

With this in mind, after hearing about the Horus Heresy series being produced by the Black Library, despite popular praise I was somewhat wary of starting it. I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it turned out badly, but nonetheless I ordered the first trilogy and started on Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.

Inquisitors Galore: A Review of the Eisenhorn and Ravenor Trilogies

My introduction to the body of Warhammer 40k literature was the Ciaphas Cain books, which is a bit odd in retrospect; while a great series of novels, they are hardly representative of the body as a whole. Nonetheless, I quickly read all six books thanks to generous loaning from Max, and after finishing craved more 40k fiction goodness. After doing some research, it seemed that Dan Abnett was considered the premier 40k author, and that many people recommended the Gaunt's Ghosts series as an excellent starting place.

The series itself is fantastic--I tore through all 13 of the novels in short order, leaving it not only my favorite 40k series, but one of my favorite novel series overall, right up there with Discworld and the X-Wing series. Perhaps even someday I'll get around to writing a review of them.

Anyway, after exhausting that trove, I once again felt the craving for more, and taking advantage of a gift card sitting long un-used, purchased more of Dan Abnett's 40k books, most notably the two Inquisitorial

Tales from the Imperium: The Tale of the Three Inquisitors

[Editor's Note: This is the second in what will hopefully be a long series of fables, classical stories, and legends (in both unabridged and summarized form) from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, collaboratively written by myself and Stormshrug. We hope you find them enjoyable, and encourage you to contribute yourself to the collection if you feel so inclined.]


Long, long ago, the almighty Emperor in his infinite wisdom created the Inquisition, His Holy right hand to preserve the peace and sanctity of His mighty Imperium. However, as it began, it was but a single institution filled with a multitude of Inquisitors, all seeking to do His Holy work as best as he was able.


During this time there was a band of three Inquisitors who often worked together, although each had a very different approach as how to best serve Him. While traveling to a distant star to do His work, their ship suffered a horrible Warp accident, and were it not for the Emperor's watchful eye upon His most trusted servant all 3 would have perished. They were returned to real-space when suddenly the 4 Chaos Gods appeared before them. And they spoke to them.

Tech Trumps All: A Comparison of Eldar and Tau

Somehow, our group had ignored the Eldar for a long time; I was naturally a little familiar with the lore and idea beyond the Space-Elves, and I had glanced through their codex, but been put off with their standard troop choice wielding S4 AP5 18" weapons (coming as a Tau player, this seems inexcusably bad for a shooty army).

However, it had been quite a while since I had tried out a new army, and a discussion with Max reminded me how they were supposed to be a shooty army, and thus I decided to give the Elfdar another chance and give the codex a full and close reading. As you can suspect from me writing an entire blog post on this, I was happily surprised.

Tales from the Imperium: The Inquisitor and the Three Xenos

[Editor's Note: This is the first in what will hopefully be a long series of fables, classical stories, and legends (in both unabridged and summarized form) from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, collaboratively written by myself and Stormshrug. We hope you find them enjoyable, and encourage you to contribute yourself to the collection if you feel so inclined.]


Once, long long ago, an Inquisitor served the Emperor of Mankind faithfully and strongly. Although his name is now lost to the sands of history, he is remembered for his long, golden hair and his sterling record of service to the Imperium. He fought tirelessly against the xenos, the witch, and the heretic for many centuries, and slowly but surely the years began to weigh upon him. He found himself questioning his faith, being tempted by the radical, and in short suffering doubt, an inquisitorial sin.

There's No Good Title for This: Star Wars Vs. 40k

So to finish off this trifecta of Star Wars related post, I'm going to increase my nerd factor by a significant factor and do a comparison that's been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Note this comparison will be more in a spiritual form than completely grounded in fact: unlike some people who analyze the impact of the Death Star's destruction on Endor, or argue over what would happen if the same fired on the Enterprise, I feel like with both the 40k and the SW universe it's important to focus more on the fiction than the science. I'll attempt to break this down into several subsections, going from most general to most specific, and deciding who has an edge.

Assumptions
The first big assumption would be location. The first problem is that the 40k universe is far larger than the SW one. 40k's Imperium of Man numbers around a million planets at a given time, while SW's listed planets number less than a hundred, and in total can't be more than in the hundreds. Therefore to get even  a balanced fight you'd have to assume the Imperium is launching an rather sizable expeditionary force against the SW's universe; so a new extragalactic invasion, but a different force. Timewise, we'll assume directly after NJO SW and "modern" 40k.

Structure & Organization
In general, 40k has the big advantage in that all the human planets are pretty much under one government, with one religion, one tongue, etc. Obviously it's not completely uniform, and many changes exist, but it's fundamentally far more unified than the SW universe is. Even the simple fact that the Galactic Alliance is still an alliance with a senate puts it at a disadvantage; there were beings arguing for peace with the Yuuzhan Vong even after the conquest of Coruscant. In comparison, while sometimes faulty, the Imperium benefits from a clear, unquestionable command structure and a fervent ideological belief, so is rather comparable to the Yuuzhan Vong in this respect, and would cause similar problems, and be similarly useless to negotiate with. On the flip side, individual commanders in the SW universe are given far more freedom and initiative, giving the GA far more flexibility and ease of response. This can obviously still work against them, since the GA is a bit more weak to infighting and clash of opinion than the Imperium, but it still is a nice benefit on a micro side of things. Despite this, though, the Imperium wins pretty easily in this category.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 0

Technology
This section is where SW has a pretty big advantage. While the Imperium has some pretty awesome technology, and a lot of cool things, there aren't a ton of things that the Imperium has that the Alliance doesn't have something comparable. The other big advantage is the stagnation the the Imperium. Whatever they bring to the battle is often all they'll ever have, and often thing they lose are irreplaceable. The Alliance however is easily adjustable and is always evolving, and this gives a huge advantage. If they can get around YV black holes, I'm sure they can adjust to void shields, and if they can deal with amphistaffs I doubt chainswords will be problematic for long. Another nice touch is the Alliance's ability to use droids, especially things like the YV Hunter droids Lando develops, which would help balance out the sheer numbers of the Imperium and things like Sentinels and Dreadnaughts. Both the Tau and the Tyranids have used adaptability to overcome the Imperium, and I suspect the SW universe would also benefit from this. Technology can often vary widely through Imperial Worlds, to the point where you can sometimes (rarely) get IG regiments who use stubbers because they don't have lasgun technology. SW planets are pretty well distributed technology wise, with the exceptions of real backwaters, which is rarer than in the Imperium.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 1


Standard Infantry
The standard lasgun and the standard blaster seem pretty similar in function and effectiveness, and the same for standard armor (I feel like Stormtrooper armor [in lore if not in the movies] is about the same as Carapace armor). Numbers-wise the Imperial Guard probably has an advantage, since the Alliance doesn't seem super hot on infantry combat, although 1v1 a Guardsman and an Alliance trooper are probably about evenly matched, again trading pure doctrinarian and standards for a bit more freedom and flexibility. Assuming even numbers, it'd be an even battle, but assuming respective norms the Imperium would probably have an advantage.
Imperium: 1.5
Alliance: 2

Ground Vehicles
While the movies showcase a lot of ground vehicles, in the EU and especially NJO they tend to have a very minor role, making them a bit harder to judge. SW is usually all about air and space superiority, and ground troops if you /have/ to take on ground targets. That being said, even assuming the technological adjustment I mentioned above, changing the whole way of making war would be time consuming and a bit difficult, so the Imperium would likely have a large advantage in mechanized combat and would enjoy it. (Not to even mention titans).
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 2

Starfighters
As far as I'm given to understand, Lightnings and Marauders and the like are simply more modern versions of our current fighter jets, in that they're simply armor and ballistics. SW has the advantage of true advanced fighters, with shields, lasers, missiles, etc. Fighters in the Imperium seem there mostly to engage other starfighters and harry smaller ships, whereas a concentrated starfighter strike will often take down capital ships given the right circumstances in SW. 40k fighters seem best suited to air support on planets, where SW ones have a complete superiority role often unless they're super specialized like B-wings. All in all, SW fighters would almost certainly outclass Imperial ships, giving the Alliance a huge advantage in space combat.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3

Capital Ships
The Imperium has an advantage in having bigger capital ships, while the Alliance has an advantage in them being much more numerous and much more easily produced. This is where things get a little tricky, given relative differences in fire power and weaponry, but it seems like the Alliance would have the pure advantage in terms of small and medium ships (both in terms of them being more common and usually packing more firepower and defenses). In terms of actual capital class ships, Imperial ones probably would easily come off the better in 1v1, but this is one case where SW has a big advantage, since the average fleet contains a number of Star Destroyers, Mon Calamari Cruisers, etc while it's a giant Imperial fleet that contains an equal number of large ships. They also seem far superior in terms of maneuverability and bringing fire to bear; Imperial ships seem like giant sea ships in terms of using broadsides, whereas SW ships are more like "true" space ships, giving them another advantage. The short story is that the SW universe is centered around space combat for the most part, whereas 40k is often more focused on ground combat. Nevertheless, it would still be a definite fight, even if SW has an advantage.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3.5

Elites
What you've all been waiting for this entire time, I'm sure: the question of Jedi vs. Space Marines. In a 1v1 setting, I'm going to say that an average Jedi will beat an average Space Marine every time. Jedi are notoriously hard to kill in ranged combat, and will close to CC range. The average Space Marine does not have a power weapon, whereas every Jedi does: this means that with anything up to and sometimes including a Sergeant the Jedi will win through pure weapon advantage (even a well-trained swordsman with a power sword in 40k lore will always beat a normal Space Marine, so I don't think this is at all a reach). When you throw power weapons into the mix, it gets a little closer. The Space Marine will have a lot of experience (oftentimes in the scale of hundreds of years) and the power weapon would theoretically the same as a lightsaber in terms of blocking and hitting, but the Jedi's Force ability usually means battle senses: no matter how much experience, the ability to foresee an opponent's move will usually be the deciding factor. Jedi are also faster and stronger than normal humans, albeit not as much as Space Marines, which is why I'll say that Jedi will probably often, if not always, beat a power-equipped SM. When you get to Librarians or Chapter Masters it gets interesting, since the Warp is way different than the Force. I suspect that one of the above versus a highly experienced Jedi Knight or Jedi Master would be a very close thing. If we get to named characters it's anyone's guess.
However, the key point is that Space Marines rarely work along, and are usually in squads of at least 5. Jedi often work in teams of 2 or 1, and it's a special occasion when you get more than that. So really the question comes down to statistically likely what size group would be fighting what other size. I was forced to do something I've prior to this been trying to avoid, that of looking up statistics.
In the SW univese, there's at the end of NJO around 200 Jedi left. According to Wookiepedia, there's about about 20 million planets with sentient life; a rather unhelpful figure, to be honest. The Galactic Alliance page puts the planets at about 1.2 million.
The galaxy pages states that the total population of the galaxy is 100 quadrillion lifeforms over 20 million planets, meaning an average of 5 billion per planet. I think these numbers are fishy, but let's run with it. That means that the Jedi:People ratio is about 1:3.6^13.
The averages for the Imperium are much much harder to come by, since they can vary from billions and billions on a hive world to mere hundreds on a frontier colony. However, the planets is an easy one million. To make thngs easy, let's also assume 5 billion per planet, giving the population roughly equal to the Alliances. Instead of 200 Jedi, though, you have roughly 1,000 chapters of 1,000, or a million marines, giving a much favorable ratio.
Even assuming the SW numbers of stupidly inflated (which it probably is, I don't think most SW writers would agree that the average planet has 5 billion lifeforms, or that the Alliance is composed of 1.2 million planets) 200 Jedi is still a tiny, tiny number, so the Space Marines would likely steamroll A LOT. I'm sure they could be taken down, but like everything else they fight, it would cost a lot.
Imperium: 3.5
Alliance: 3.5

Conclusion
I actually didn't have numbers or anything planned out while writing this, it all came kind of naturally, so I'm actually surprised the score came out even. Regardless, it seems the general gist is that SW holds the natural front on space combat, whereas the Imperium would dominate on the ground (although the space combat advantage would also likely turn into air superiority on the ground, which might change things; I doubt even hydras would do much vs. strafing X-Wings). It would probably be simply a race to make sure the Imperium never won a space battle to the point they could launch a ground invasion: in some ways, it would be very similar to the Yuuzhan Vong war in that respect, meaning the Alliance has some good experience fighting them off.
Again, I think the key point would be the technological one mentioned above. Much as the Yuuzhan Vong were a mostly static race, the Imperium would probably win a number of smashing victories out the gate, but as the Alliance adjusted that momentum would quickly peter out, and eventually the Alliance would have the upper hand. How much loss would occur before that is up for debate, but I feel an invasion of the SW universe by the Imperium would eventually end badly.
Of course, the big question is again the numbers. I assumed that 40k had a huge advantage, given the lore I've read in both, but apparently the technical facts on Wookipedia speak differently (I'm compelled to call bulls***, but who knows). Assuming the current wars-on-all-fronts of the Imperium, they wouldn't be able to devote as much resources as necessary; if they had somehow secured their galaxy, then they'd also be at an advantage. That would also mean you'd assume the SW galaxy was equally peaceful, but even at their worst they're never as war-torn as the 40k universe is.

Anyway, I've very curious to hear what you all think; what points you think I missed, what points you think I got wrong, etc. If I get enough interesting comments I might write a follow-up, since as I said this wasn't /that/ planned out. Other than that though, this'll probably be the last SW post for a while, so expect other things next time.

-HTMC

Sinister Sacrilege: The Third Session

When we last left our brave Acolytes, they had successfully fought off an attempt at Tyranid incursion aboard a Black Ship and were now landing on Holy Terra as the 13th Black Crusade erupted around them. Ignoring that major event, they were tasked to keep hunting Tyranids! In case another ship carrying more of the troops that had the Genestealer Cult had made it to Terra. Hilarious hijinks and a lot of bad rolling later, you get this. But our brave Psyker does a lot better at summarizing than I would do, so I turn once again to the GM's perspective on things.

First off, as I've written elsewhere (although maybe not on this blog?) I really like leveling up and advancing and getting shiny new toys. One of the chief complaints with Orpheus that I had was that once you started, it was incredibly hard to really get better, and you were pretty much at your peak from the get-go. Contrast this starkly with DnD 4e, where you're constantly improving both in stats, skills, and if you have a cool DM, equipment. I think Dark Heresy strikes a good balance, since your stats are mostly maxed although you can spend to improve them to a certain extent, but you are constantly learning new abilities (and again, if you have a nice GM getting cool equipment). However, this is besides the point. Since I do like leveling up and stuff, I suspect that it rubs off on my GM style in how I reward my players. The DH rulebook recommends something like 200xp for every 4 hours played, whereas I last session awarded 500 xp for about the same amount of time played. I know in my position I would want to get to the higher ranks quicker, to be able to start to do really cool things, thus I was pretty generous with my doling out (plus, killing a heretic is something like 50xp, I feel that killing a bunch of Genestealers is thus worth a lot more). Unsure of the money thing, I just gave the same amount, 500tg to do with as they wanted (and as I suspected, a lot of them bought armor). I also found the cool set of Drama Cards, which I adjusted for use in Dark Heresy, and I actually want to give them out, since although they can make my work slightly harder in some cases, they're really cool effects and I look forward to seeing how my PCs make use of them.

I suspect in certain ways being generous like this makes life as a GM harder. PCs are better equipped and harder to kill and have more ways to get out of traps, jump rails, etc. But on the other hand,  I feel like it leads to a lot more interesting gameplay with your PCs trying different things. For instance, I gave Max grappling hooks since he asked nicely, and they ended up doing a wall-walk with the Psyker to get on top of the building. I think the group I play with prizes cleverness and imagination over straight killing of things, so giving them more skills and equipment to do this leads to more interesting events. And on the plus side, it gives me an excuses to throw harder enemies at them, which is more fun from my perspective.

The one thing I'm unsure of is how much people like drops vs. buying their own stuff. It's definitely easier for me to let people just buy what they want (and given the Inquisitorial background this makes perfect sense) but I also don't know if people in general prefer to find their own things. I know with the last D&D campaign I played it was much more about person specific drops, but in D&D it's also much more about armor and main weapon, whereas in DH you have a lot more choices and things you could get (such as gun sights, grenades, special ammo, etc. as well as a large range of weapons). If anyone has any insight on this, let me know.

To switch topics, I also tried out something new that somewhat worked. Dark Heresy pretty much boils down to either investigation or combat. The problem with investigation is it is often not controlled in any way. There are ways around that, but things like "you need to find the control panel before the ship blows up" have their own downside as well. Instead, what I decided to try was to punish failed investigations, something that doesn't happen in a normal session. Emma (who would be quite the sadistic GM given her suggestions to me, such as one of the first questions after a session being "Did anyone die? Any serious injuries?) wanted to have her own spiders inserted into the plot (specifically large, radioactive spiders that paralyzed people) so I created the Extreme Mobile Mutant Arachnids. Basically what happened was the cargo hall the PCs were investigating was, well, large, and I assume places like that have vermin. How it worked was whenever a PC would do an investigative roll, if they failed the roll by more than 2 degrees, a pair of EMMAs would spawn and attack, with an additional EMMA for every additional degree of failure.

They were meant to be more annoying then truly deadly, since they were fast but also very low toughness and weak attacks, and the paralyzing could be treated with a simple medicae test. However, for whatever reason the PCs had difficulty killing them, and they also investigated far far less than I expected, and went the more combat route (see: Rome pointing a gun at a Guardsman's head to wake him up). However, I think it worked well and I might adapt the idea for the future.

Also, strangely enough, my rolling was unnaturally luck for my NPCs whereas the PCs suffered from an unending string of bad luck. For instance, the Chimera driver managed to stave off spasming from a psyker attack despite having low Willpower, and an on-fire Guardsman managed to critically avoid getting hit a second time with a flamer... twice (that's two 5% rolls) and given how awesome that is, he put the fires out with his amazing dodge. Meanwhile, Max managed to jam his gun twice in one session (again, that's two 5% likelihood rolls) and various other bad things happened, like Rome diving into a glass window and bouncing off and Kory failing to read a basic written document. Despite these setbacks the PCs still emerged triumphant.

Finally, one complaint about the DH as a system. DH relies on a lot of situation modifiers, especially in terms of combat. I'd been struggling to keep all of them in mind during combat, but given how many different things could be in effect, this was at times hard. Luckily Kory in a move of brilliance wrote out all of them (an impressive achievement) which will hopefully help the others remember them, and between us we'll actually get all of them. I do think in general it's a cool idea, and if you're playing DH a lot I imagine it'd get a lot easier and simpler, but adding a lot of modifiers in general can be a chore and can slow down gameplay. But as I said, hopefully the group working together can alleviate this, and maybe it gives a reason to pay attention during other people's combat turns.

Because I missed last week, we're doing a second session tomorrow night, so expect another update then.

-HTMC

Sinister Sacrilege: The Second Session

Last week was the second session of Dark Heresy, although in terms of my overall campaign planning it was more like session 1.5. However, we did finish the session plot arch and apparently everyone enjoyed themselves. For another excellent summary see that other guy's blog. But again from my perspective as GM, some other things came up during the session that I felt like I should comment on, so I shall.

The first has to do with players. Although I already know they can be surprisingly inventive (especially the group I play with) I got lulled back into a false sense of security the first session, since everything pretty much went Blaykakudori (Blaykaku means Blake's Plan). This session was full of surprises, though, from having Jesse's character start a rock concert to attract the attention of some heretical guards, Aaron attempting to go Inception-like on an unconscious Navigator, and Max made a smart but not expected by me move of accessing security records for the ship. All of these were very good ideas and most of them ended up gaining the PCs some advantage, but also meant I was constantly adjusting, which was interesting. The Inquisitor campaign I did was much more railroaded, almost like an on-rails shooter, whereas this session was designed to be "you're on a ship, go whereever you want." Thus the more interesting ideas.

Probably the most unexpected one had do with Inquisitor Schuld (alternatively called many other things by PCs, who have an annoying habit of never remembering any NPCs name). My plan for him was to be a nice friendly trainer Inquisitor just for the ship-board portion of the campaign, and then once the Broodlord and Genestealers rushed onto the scene, he would valiantly take on the Broodlord and they would mutually murder each other. What I didn't expect was for my PCs to ignore the Genestealers (and be finished with the Servitors and Guardsmen) and focus their entire fire for a turn on the Broodlord. I obviously couldn't just let them do that without any effect, so the Broodlord ended up seriously mauled while Inquisitor Schuld (or Badassius if you're Max) waltzed in and finished him off. So in effect, my PCs saved an NPC I had earmarked for death. I suspect this will have significant ramifications later. I guess the moral of the story for me is be prepared for anything.

Another factor that I'm forced to be conscious of is game balance, not in the sense of difficulty but in activities. I have 5 PCs, all with different talents and foci, and it would be bad form to focus on one are too much. For instance, a couple of the PCs are definitely combat-focused, whereas one is pretty much all out of combat mischief. Overall they're lacking in people-skills (as they found out when their friendly cleric went AWOL and the person with the best people-skills was, of all things, a Tech-priest) and are stacked more so in the ranged department (again found out when their cleric disappeared and they all stuck to ranged fire). I think this last session struck a good balance, with about 2 hours of investigation and 1.5 of combat, and future sessions will hopefully be somewhat more tailored to skills they have and enemies will also be made with them in mind.

Finally, a third problem I encountered (that hopefully wasn't a problem) was again linked to PC initiative and creativity. Obviously I had a lot of background planning and stuff done, in terms of what has happened before the "session" starts and what is going on during it. Obviously this was meant to be discoverable by the PCs, although they can't do it naturally. The problem arises when they either fail their skill checks or they don't bite on the hooks you give them. For instance, had they investigated the cargo room before attacking it they likely would have learned about the weirdly broken boxes, but they didn't follow the hints I dropped and choose to go later purely on the attack, and thus not be able to investigate. Thus the Genestealer attack probably seemed a lot more out of the  blue than I intended, although hopefully my after-action debriefing made it make a little bit more sense. Although I didn't hear any "wtf's?" from the players, when I brought them out I totally had a "seriously guys this has an explanation, trust me" mindset. And of course Rome choose to question things like shift schedules and guard rotations, something I had never considered at all. So moral of the story is again don't plan on PCs necessarily investigating where you want or asking the questions you'd think they'd ask.

But, as I said, it was another great session, and brought to light (as you can see) a number of issues that'll hopefully make future ones even better. Emperor knows where the merry band of "The Good Guys" will end up next (hint: it won't be pleasant).

-HTMC

All's Well That Ends Well: A Review of Damnatus

Some of you may be familiar with Damnatus, an extremely low-budget German fan-made 40k film that due to weird copyright differences between German and British law meant that it was never officially released. Naturally it was "leaked" to various torrent sites and the entirety of the film is even easily findable on Youtube, so I suspect it Games Workshops protests were more against the copyright loss than actually disliking the film, since they tend to pursue other copyright violations with extreme prejudice.

Nevertheless, I managed to acquire a copy and finally sat down to watch the 1 hour 45 minute production, and figured I should share my impressions with you.

First off, if you choose to watch it, made sure you approach it with the right mentality. If you go in expecting even an indie filmmaker type movie, you'll be disappointed, and probably end up laughing at a lot of it. If you go in thinking it was a movie made by a bunch of very enthusiastic and talented fans, you'll be very much impressed. The costumes and tone were well done, the story-line was decent if not mind-blowing, and the CGI for a lot of the scenes were far better than I expected. In particular however they did the servo-skulls was really cool, and I liked their Tech-priest costume a lot.

It does however have its weak points, particularly due to pacing. I feel like they wanted it to be a feature-length production, and thus there are quite a few shots that drag on a bit longer than they should, although never horribly so. The dialogue can be a bit stilted, and mostly not that impressive writing-wise (also, everything's in German with English subtitles, which wasn't a problem for me). The fight scenes were also a bit underwhelming, but again that's more due to the nature of the film than the actual shooting itself.

I think by far my favorite part though, has to do with the ending. Also, spoiler warning! If you don't want spoilers, stop reading this entry now. Anyway, the film follows a small kill-team who is sent to purge a cult, and they manage to do so although end up unleashing a Daemon. Now, it turns out my copy was a bit corrupted towards the end, so for the last 15 minutes I was somehow zoning out due to the occasional pausing and loss of visuals, but I perked back up at the end. For the entire team dies to a daemon. That's right, in the last 10 minutes a Daemon appears and kills everyone. I was all for this, since it was very 40k, but it seemed like an odd ending, and I was somewhat confused.

But not to worry! An Inquisitor, who we saw in the first minute of the movie and didn't appear again, finally arrives in his ship, and does the only logical thing to do when a single, lone Daemon appears on a planet:

Exterminatus!

So yes, we get treated to a nice sequence of the entire planet being bombed just because one minor daemon escaped onto the planet again. It's great, you'll love it, and it left me feeling very pleased, since it ended on a super grimdark note.

If you're really into 40k or just want to waste 2 hours on a halfway decent movie, I can recommend Damnatus: The Enemy Within. I bet it would be especially good in a group setting, especially one where people tend to talk a lot anyway.

-HTMC

Sinister Sacrilege: The First Session

This past Thursday I ran the first session of my Dark Heresy Campaign. A post from the player's perspective (and a considerably more entertaining one at that) can be found out at Mister Flask's blog, but I will add my own thoughts in from the GM's perspective (also skip down below for some additions to what Mr. Flask wrote).

For the record, Dark Heresy is a pen and paper RPG set in the Warhammer 40k universe, and this game features myself GMing and 5 PCs all playing over the internet.

First off, a problem I forsaw but didn't suspect would be quite so large: programs. When I ran Inquisitor (another 40k RPG, but not quite as good) last January, it was text-only and so we ran it exclusively through Vassal (with some Skype group IMing supplementing). We all had had Skype for quite some time, and the 3 PCs (Stormshrug, Flask, and Jesse) had all used Vassal before with me to play tabletop 40k. So set-up was relatively painless.
However, the addition of Voice for this campaign made things considerably more difficult. Although I had tried to make sure everyone was set up ahead of time, here's how things went down.
6:00- Kory and Rome are on. Rome realizes Voxli, the internet based group chat program I had planned to use, wasn't compatible with Linux, which I didn't know he was running
7:00- Rome manages to get Mumble/Murmur (think open-source Ventrilo/TeamSpeak) running on a personal server. We start trying to get everyone to install Mumble.
8:00- Problems installing Mumble continue. We realize not everyone has Vassal up and runnin
9:00- Stormshrug arrives, needs to download both programs. Takes some time.
9:30- Flask arrives, needs to download Mumble. Takes some time
10:00- Rome decides to restart computer since he's made so many changes. Problems occur and the Murmer server goes down with it
10:30- Finally, everything seems to be working, although Flask is having significant difficulties hearing and being heard. We start anyway
11:00- Jesse arrives, downloads Mumble, joins later
12:00- We end.

So despite having everyone try to be on by 8, we don't actually start until 2.5 hours later and only play for 1.5 hours, and probably less than that when you factor in interruptions. However, the PCs were very efficient in that short time frame. Here's my synopsis, since unfortunately Flask left out a couple minor details, probably due to the aforementioned voice difficulties.

PCs awaken on a ship yanked out of the Warp, and are tasked with investigating. They first head to the Bridge and look around, questioning a man who looks like he's in charge (he was actually the First Officer, but the PCs never bothered to ask, for whatever reason). From there they proceeded to the Power Generator Room, which led to the Engine room, only to be blocked to to lack of access privileges. After a lot of diplomacy they managed to secure the name of a commanding officer, and headed to a prison ward to meet with him, and eventually managed to secure the necessary authorization to enter the engine room. They also got hints about strange goings-on on the ship prior to Warp trouble, which presumably occurred during the long period they were in a virtual reality machine undergoing training.

Anyway! Notes on the session from my perspective.

One problem I didn't foresee was accents, strangely enough. Because I was actually having to voice my NPCs, I felt it necessary to differentiate my voice between characters. I tended to fall back on a  British one automatically, for whatever reason, although I think a Germanic one entered at one point. I'm not sure how good/bad they sounded, but it's definitely something to both practice and write down for important NPCs.

Speaking of which, I don't know how much my fellow members have noticed, but I tend to fall back on straight German when in need of a non-standard name (which isn't surprising given my recent Austrian adventure). For instance, my Orpheus character had the last name Gotteson and he was a priest (misspelling intentional), two of my Inquisitors are called Glaub and Schuld, and an upcoming character has the surname von Droß, among other things. I actually don't know how many of them ran these names through translators (and I'm sure they will now), but they're usually appropriate in some way. I don't feel too bad about this though, since even Games Workshop has given us the Death Korps of Krieg and the Mordian regiment (War and Murder, respectively). Although sometimes I feel like I'm getting a bit too particular (not everyone in 40k can be Germanic) it's very useful to have another language to draw upon, especially one that fits well with the universe.

I also designed this session to be a bit more open-world. The PCs managed to find a map in the beginning, and had their choice as to where to investigate. I actually made a number of maps of common rooms in the ship, and the PCs were free to go whereever they wanted. I did have some concern over what kind of options they would take, and did a kind of quick practice run through with Emma (i.e. you're here and this happened, what would you do next?) and the PCs actually matched fairly well what she did, which is pretty much what I was expecting. What I was not expecting was the number of high rolls the PCs managed, including a few rolls I thought they were definitely going to miss since they had pretty high difficulty. They also tended to do a lot more social interaction and less straight up investigating, although I'm not sure if that's the situation in particular or the way I'm setting up the scene, so we'll see.

One problem that I'm lucky I planned ahead for was power and authority. In the 40k universe, the Inquisition has essentially unlimited power and ultimate authority. I guessed (and correctly at that) that the PCs would naturally abuse this as much as possible, which is especially easy while onboard an Imperial vessel where theoretically they have ultimate control. The solution was to make the PCs still in training while aboard the vessel, and thus not be official members of the Inquisition. They naturally still had an Inquisitor boss to fall back on when needed (and they did a couple times) but this handicap kept them from just charging through and doing anything they wanted without repercussions, which made for a much more interesting session, I think.

Overall though, everything seemed to be going pretty well. Once all the electronic problems were resolved, everyone was in character and making smart decisions, and putting asides Flask's communication problems (due to lousy internet) everyone seemed engaged and involved, which I think is in no small part due to the addition of voice. I have high hopes for the continuation of this session this Thursday, especially since combat is likely, and it should be a blast as soon as they make it off the ship (well, assuming they survive that long).

On a final note, the one biggest thing I picked up from Inquisitor (the last campaign) that seems really obvious but I didn't catch onto right away was that as a GM, I'm playing with the PCs, not against them. I think the problem was that as a video game player, I'm by and large used to competitive gameplay, where I'm trying to always "win," although the objective and means may change. Even as a PC in the other RPGs, I was still trying to "win" against whatever the GM threw at us. Thus I went into Inquisitor as almost "me against the PCs," which reared his ugly head when a PC came up with a clever way around a trap, and rather than let him do it I said no because it didn't fit with what I had planned. Obviously this led to a sour mood, and although I realized my error a bit later and "fixed" it, I still felt really bad for a while afterwards. Although there was some RPGs where it is indeed GM vs. PCs, Dark Heresy I feel isn't one of them. The PCs want to be challenged, want the potential to lose, but I don't think they want to feel that the GM is out to get them. Rather, I'm there to set a good scene and give the chance to overcome hard odds, and my enjoyment comes more from seeing the creative ways and approaches the PCs take. I made my PCs put a lot of effort into character creation, and I think it would be hard for both me and them if one of them died (not to say I won't do it if that's what happens, since it is 40k after all, but again that's not my goal per se). An RPG is a social event, and should be fun for everyone, if challenging a lot of the time. And if I want to get my way while still GMing, well, that's what NPCs are for.

Comments as always are welcome! Expect more updates weekly as the campaign progresses.

-HTMC