Hi guys,

I'm currently running an adventure…

…but it uses dark heresy rules and builds…

…on the ship of a rogue trader…

…with enemies and locations pulled from deathwatch…

Where the HELL do I put my questions?

In the Black Crusade forums, I guess :)

Depends very much on the Question.

Things about the DH system, character builds and weaponry? Look no further and ask them here.

You want to know stuff about travel times, ship to ship combat, navigating the Warp? Move to RT forum

Want to know more about Deathwatchy things? Guess.

Somehow though, I have the feeling that you already knew this answer….

Yeah, I suppose I figured that for questions.  I just don't like the idea of spreading things all over the place.

Plot synopsis, game sessions, and general how things are going "how do you like this idea" threads however is what I'm really not sure where to put.

SirRunOn said:

I'd say right here is fine! The GM Forum is a good source for broad-based 'how do you like this?' feedback.

Well that's cool.

I suppose a tiny bit of background on the story I'm weaving would be a good idea.  I've already said about the games I'm working from, but I should say how I'm putting it together.

The early missions of the campaign are happening under the less than watchful eye of a rather excessively profit oriented rogue trader, one tossed his warrant as a way of getting rid of him and not the type to geneally handle things very well.  As such the party is a mismash of characters thrown together for no particular reason other than he had seventy five people of mixed backgrounds and usefulness he could spare and wanted fifteen response teams at his beck and call.

Don't worry, he gets worse.

So you have a team, and before we got into real role playing we put them through a training scenario.  Simple stuff.  Basic uncomplicated dungeon crawl.  Just straight passages, corners and T junctures.  A quick list of the troubles and lessons learned.

T one, went away from the musky mildew smell down one side.

Quick encounter with a gargoyle, got off one shot(just missed the mechanicus by 1% added a comedy fear check and he messed his shorts when the bug that just missed him drilled straight through a metal wall), then gunned down by everyone else.  Learning experience for me.  I now realize with crit charts things take about ten more wounds to kill than just their wound numbers.

T two, went again away from musky mildew smell down one hall.

Learning encounter for the party.  They now look BOTH ways when taking one path over another.  Shot in back by shoota ork who somehow managed to hit two of them on his burst.  Battle devolved into a lot of missing, jamming, and an ork trying to beat people over the head with a jammed shoota while everyone else poked at him with sticks.  Learning experience for me, its hard for the party to hurt something with a toughness bonus of 8.

2nd corner

Quick encounter with a floor full of rippers.  Learning experience for party, flamethrowers REALLY hurt rippers.

1st room

Battle against a tau pathfinder.  Amazingly no party member got hurt but it was SOO touch and go.  Tau spent most of the fight on his arze.  Party spent most of the fight blind as a bat.  An amazing blind attack roll saved party.

2nd room BLUUD FER DE BLUUUUUUD GUUUUUUD!

Learning experience.  Party learned how to run like scared chicken.  Khorne Berserker between them and exit, running at them screaming and charging.  Brownware downloads aplenty.  Party member survives hit from khorne axe(what freaking 4 leaf clover bs is my party smoking I wonder?).  Cogboy gets to exit, finds it locked, rolls 01 to unlock(line of the night, "HEY I know this model! CLICK).

Party victory, yayyyyy

Ammo: some left

Wounds: Everybody feelin it

Exp: 200 base after debate on if the impromptu training scenerio was official.

Next Mission: Driving through nidville

Spoiler line: FASTER FASTER MUST GO FASTER!

Now we get to the actual missions. A little background about setting should be in order.

Year 9XX.M41 thought to be the latter half of M41

Galactic Location: The Ghoul Stars

Planet: An unnamed world, apparently imperial and civilized

Planetary Location: A sprawling dirty city of low buildings, overlooked by a large hill covered with rich mansions and palatial estates.

At the outset of the adventure the party is let off from their halo barge in the most sumptuously appointed vehicle available to their Rogue Trader, a modified Chimera. This red and gold vehicle has had it’s top and weaponry removed, seats replaced with fine upholstery and a wet bar, and a massive golden Aquila tacked onto the front. It generally does parade duty.

The party’s mission is simple pick up ten people from the city and bring them back to the halo barge. Simple enough. The day is pretty, the roads are clear and the sky is open and blue with only a light lattice of spidery dark clouds way up in the sky. Even the Rogue Trader’s cruiser is slightly visible up there.

Most of the pickups were in the rich section so this is where the party started. In our party the priest was driving, with a feral scum a sanctioned psyker and a tech priest riding in the back.

1st pickup, Voorhaven Family

3 passengers, mother, father, son

This went rather well, though the psyker got some odd feedback soothsaying the kid most of it wax put off to the boy’s obvious discomfort wearing what appeared to be a tiny sailor’s suit.

2nd pickup, Skegald Family

2 Passengers, husband, wife

A jovial but rather hurried pickup. Left the party wondering what the rush was since the last group was almost lazy about heading into the car.

In the south a part of the brown clouds branched off and started heading towards the far mountain range. The look of it suggested rain.

3rd pickup, Antamaz Family

2 Passengers, Matron, Servant

The elderly matron and her servant arrived in a relaxed manner escorted by a trio of Pomeranian dogs. The pskyer began wondering what kind of sauce to use on them. He immediately got shocked by the servant who was unexpectedly carrying a shock wand, probably to fend off idiots.

As the party drove to the next pickup they were interrupted by an odd sight. Flocks of every type of bird on the planet headed north en masse.

4th pickup Antaeus Marton

1 Passenger, Antaeus Marton

The party drove up and met this fellow kissing his wife and three children goodbye. Antaeus claims he's headed on business trip to his wife, then hops in the vehicle and waves fondly to them as it drives away.

The rest of the pickups are in the poorer section of the city so the party with passengers in tow heads off the hill. Far away the stunning vista of the mist shrouded mountains is obscured as that brown vloud hits the ground to the south, begins to spread before sight is lost heading to lower city

5th pickup Trevor Centarin

1 Passenger, Trevor Centarin

The party finds this fellow’s home in a back alley, and in fact this passenger isn’t quite the upper crust as the last few. Crime boss Trevor finishes up preparations at his "facility" and hops in the transport.

As they are leaving the party hears the sounds of jets in the air. Up between the buildings they catch sight of hundreds of Thunderbolt fighters passing overhead heading south. The great wings of jets strike a wonderful visage, if a bit confusing, before they move out of sight.

On the way to the last pickup Alert sirens start sounding, and people are instructed to head to shelters. A few detours are forced around crowds of confused citizens. The loudspeakers around town blare soothing hymnals promising the protection of the faithful and that contact with xenos is a crime.

6th pickup, Tanna Gregole

1 Passenger, Tanna Gregole

As they slow to a stop before the young woman awaiting them, Antaeus hops out of transport and kisses Tanna then helps her into the transport. A dark brown cloud billows over area. The cloud seems slightly caustic. Rain starts, and to the groups surprise tiny organisms are seen squirming in the puddles.

To be continued in part 2

Well, don’t quite know if I should keep this up, seeing as I am getting views, but nobody is even bothering to comment and the idea of triple no less quadruple posting is abhorrent to me.

I’ll hit you with the next part of the adventure and see if anyone reacts.  Note as this was the first adventure, I didn’t want anybody dying and I didn’t want it tooooo heavy, I played this somewhat tongue in cheek.

Things began to get dicey at this point as shapes started appearing and disappearing in the clouds.  No one could make out anything until it began raining blood.  Being in an open topped vehicle made this a bit sick for the party mind you.  The rain was quick though and the group made it out to the open streets to pick up speed but were slowed down by PDF forces arraying themselves and heading in different directions.
 

Moving faster away from the troops the group is contacted by their Halo Barge.  He is diverting to an alternate landing point in a park some four kilometers distant.  Changing their course the party steps on it.

Moving so fast the group almost crashes into a pole in the middle of the street, or it almost crashes into them.  The chimera is lifted up on one track and everyone is shaken about.  Looking up to see what almost hit them the group realizes the pole is actually the leg of a creature, the belly of which is towering over the nearest block of buildings.  Everyone shifts to the right as they go screaming past, tipping the chimera back onto both tracks, and floor it.
(I’ll admit to taking liberties here using tactics from my tyranid tabletop force instead of standard rules, leading with biotitans is something I do, not Jormungandr)

As the GM wants to work on the shock and awe effect, as the chimera rockets down the street the driver begins to need driving checks to dodge falling thunderbolt parts.  Wings, engines and pilot parts begin raining down.  The small sailor suited kid actually catches a skull and smiles before his parents swat it away.
 

A unit of PDF run down a side street firing at something as their heavy bolter team follows them along.  Just before the chimera nears them the gunners are hit by something that splashes over the pair and melts them into gun goop and articulated bone fragments.  That convinces the party to get off the street and they rocket back down the alleys only to find a hoard of hormagaunts chasing them.
 

Concerned abut this the psyker grabs one of the dogs and throws it to the hormagaunts… doesn’t have much effect.  The matron’s servant shock prods him again.  The rest of the party ties him up in the back, as a hormagaunt lands in the deck with them.  Confused that it actually caught the fleeing chimera the creature sniffs around a bit leaving the two free party members the chance to shoot at it, which they do.  The mechanicus misses but the feral scum blows it’s head off with a point blank shotgun blast.
 

To add to the bad things the engine of their vehicle starts to sputter, forcing the scum to rip off some plush seating so the mechanicus can get at said engine.  Crawling in the adept has a short but pointed argument with a ripper trying to make a lunch out of the more organic parts of the engine before banging on it with some tool and making it work again.
 

The battered and burnt tech priest pulls himself out of the engine compartment as the feral scum starts to toss away the dead gaunt.  The psyker tells the scum to keep the hormagaunts claws while he fires off a psychic flash bang into the hormagaunts.  While this would have little effect the warp phenomenon he manages to cause with only one psychic die suddenly shows everyone a glimpse of the heart of the warp… giving him and the mechanicus some insanity points and face planting the hormagaunt hoard in a pile of wtf.
(Playing fast and loose? Me? Nahhh…)
 

With the engine fixed the priest again floors the contraption while the tech priest prays to the machine spirits.  “Faster Faster Must Go FASTER” seems to count as a prayer at least.  As they look a bulk transport passes overhead towards the starport.  The massive ship begins to crack and burn under the assault of tyranid acids and smashes into the port at speed, crashing to the ground and making some secondary explosions that can be seen even from the party’s back alley.

Hoping the Halo Barge is on time and there they can only press on as a trio of gargoyles homes in on their position from above and behind.  A few totally ineffective volleys of fire later from both sides and the psyker rips free of his bindings, grabs a dog and rolls a perfect shot on a gargoyle with a shrieking Pomeranian, the little dog grabbing something important and pulling one of the gargoyles out of the air.  The rest of the group looks around in shock.  Meanwhile the servant whips out a cattle prod and shocks the psyker into unconsciousness.
 

Ordering everybody to duck the priest whips around while driving and blasts an exterminator cartridge into the air over everyone’s heads.  Not wanting EVERYBODY to start spending fate points so soon I just have the gargoyles roll for avoidance and one cooks.  The other goes down to a close range shotgun blast and flops away as the Halo Barge comes into sight, landed in the middle of a large park.  Only one obstacle remains between the party and cover from the second armed group ringing the Barge, a Tyranid Warrior has gotten into the way and is firing at them with a death spitter.

Watching the front Aquila start to melt under repeated acid grub fire the priest tells everyone to brace themselves and floors it.  The warrior barely throws itself out of the way before the chimera comes roaring through.  With a few rude gestures to the rear the party breathes a sigh of relief.
 

Down the hill the chimera roars to and onto the Halo Barge… luckily remembering to hit the breaks before they go out the other side.  The guards rush back on and the great lifter takes off.
 

Happily they’ve left the tyranids behind, but the first night of adventure wasn’t over yet.
Does anyone want part three?

 I want part three :)

I'm going nuts trying to get this image into the bulk of my next post so I hope this will work.

Now on with the scheduled program @#$%…  Btw, that's a ship from rogue trader if anyone's not familair.

Oh and the picture's of a firestorm not a tyrant, they're all like that.

Why thank you Heidrich I’ll be glad to carry on then.  As we all know the party isn’t out of the woods yet!  Things were getting a little dicey last time, but hell they pulled through well… as they were supposed to I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to keep the group if I killed off half of them in the first session…  Pomeranians however were apparently not so plot shielded.  I'm writing this all from memory so it might wander around a bit.

We catch up with our party this time, catching their collective breaths as the other team runs into the halo barge behind them and the mass conveyor takes off to the skies.  With a little rattling and jinking the burly vessel makes it up out of the tyranid swarm and cloud under it’s own power(wouldn’t do to be TOO unkind now would it meh heh heh) and make the trip up to their orbiting mothership the great and mighty cruiser “Pride of Vincenti”

See above image *Points up covering face with other hand*

Taking to the docking bay and loading on the party generally crashes in a wheezing pile on the ground outside the halo barge while anything they, or their coverage group, were carrying with them that could hurt the vessel(I tend to say anything over ap4) are loading into a cart and their charges, all alive and well besides some small now less than frisky doggies are whisked away to the luxury suites.  Unmeshing themselves from the pile a call comes down for the senior party members of team one to join the Captain on the bridge.  After some squabbling as to just who the hell the senior party members were they decided to send the emperor bother-er and the tech priest up to the bridge while leaving the feral scum back down to keep the psyker properly tased.

They sort of needed to, because somewhere along the way he’d(I say he it’s a female character but male player again) decided on his goal for this character, to treat results on the warp mishap and perils tables like pokemon.  Gotta gettem all o_O…  And maybe collect 100 insanity and corruption on the way there.  Yeaaahhhh… this is gonna be fun…

So the pair of priests step onto the elevator and allow the men on the giant hamster wheels to run them up to the top floor and the bridge.  Pretty description of the way too open diamondite paned bridge runs in this space.  They meet the Captain, who just generally thanks them for their service and promptly forgets about them.  Before they head back down, or just generally wander there, a distress call comes over the comms.  A nice image appears onscreen of a Jericho class pilgrim transport, along with it’s uninvited guest, something with a few too many eyes and tentacles to really be considered polite company, crawling along it’s aft port quarter.  Everyone makes the prerequisite gasps of astonishment as if no one could see THAT happening in the middle of a tyranid invasion, before the ship calls directly to the Pride for help.  Explaining that they have more than 100,000 defenseless souls and high members of the local ecclesiarchyy on board they demand that the Rogue Trader save them.

The trader shrugs, points at the general morass and orders his gun decks to fire on that vessel.  It takes him a few moments as the crew derisively snorts he didn’t say which vessel to fire on before he can manage to make clear he DID mean the Jericho.

The party members shrug, in a better them than us, they were dead anyway, and it’s a crime to have contact with xenos, even if that contact is being anal probed while they’re eating you, attitude.  The ship shakes from the full broadside going off, a rather gruff set of curses come over the comms from the pilgrim ship and the party members take their leave while something flashes rather brightly in the background.

Returning to the group, which generally consists of the 6’7” feral scum female alternately tasing and worshiping the bound 5’0” pskyer female, don’t ask, apparently on her planet they have these shamans and the crazier the better I suppose, the priests just manage to reach earshot when new orders pop up.  Apparently something “of the warp” is happening on the ship, and all the fifteen combat teams are being ordered to seek it out and mop up.  With this so they all heft their trusty shotguns and kick the psyker back into consciousness then head for the area the tech priest points to on his data slate.  On the way there something falls off one of the trucks heading for the munitorium and the scum trips over it.  The other players leave her in the sprawled mess and continue on.

In a few moments the party sees armed group three, their cover unit on the ground.  Before they can say much to them one starts retching and his group gathers around him to see what they can do to help.  Unfortunately for said wretch I happen to have a copy of the 2nd edition tyranid codex which had a wonderful pre-battle ability called “Jenkins is acting oddly” and well… ooh boy was he ever.  Jenkins, for whom else could it be, even if it wasn‘t, suddenly managed to explode all over his buddies in a garish mass of tentacles, ripping spines and palm fronds that grabbed them all together and pulled.  Boss was immediately down to 14 armed combat squads…

And with this the party broke into a run towards medbay to get checked out because they’d been breathing the exact same crud poor Jenkins was.

In the meanwhile the feral scum was fast falling in love with something.  She didn’t know what it was, but it was a gun so big she had to drag it along, and if just for that she was utterly in love with it.

While all this was occurring the psyker was busily scanning for the troublesome “of the warp” thing they had happening on board ship somewhere.  As they were done getting scanned in the medbay she finally picked something up towards the aft, just as the ship’s main astropath made a general call that the problem was in the front of the ship.  Calling him up she argued the point but got nowhere with that so she grabbed the other two party members and headed straight for the warp anomaly.  I’m quite sure the other party members were totally overjoyed by that, but the didn’t really mention any problems with it.  The feral scum still hadn’t caught up with them, dragging around while still dragging around something rather large.

Rushing to the source of the anomaly, and hurrying a bit because it was starting to get on in the day, the party found themselves in the aft starboard side storage compartments, just up against the outer wall of the ship.  Pushing the door to the compartment open they got themselves a little bit of a shock.  The little boy they’d been escorting on the planet had actually taken off his sailor suit, and his mommy and daddy apparently allowed tattoos on the prepubescent.  Though the fact they also allowed chains, floating, and demonic possession probably explained that point.

Mouths agape, eyes wide, the party had apparently stumbled onto a chaos ritual.  Free corruption for everyone!  Yay!  And everyone wrote down their first 1 on the corruption section of their player sheets, except for the scum who had finally hit upon the idea of putting the big gun on a dolly and rushing it to the scene.

So the boy, now obviously a demon host, was floating between his parents, obviously a pair of his cultists.  Wheeling his head around to look at the party, and laughing as their little las and shot weapons bounced harmlessly around him, broke into a speech.

Obviously I’m not going to bother with the whole thing but paraphrasing… “Blah Blah Corruption, Blah Blah, Demon no duh, Blah Blah thanks for the lift, Blah Blah horrible stuff Blah chaos etc Blah wtf is that? Why do I have a huge hole in me?”

You see, as the demon prattled, sure of it’s imperviousness, the feral scum had come up with that weapon, and while she didn’t know what it was the tech priest recognized a fully charged mp lascannon when he saw it.  They quickly set it up and while I was going along trying to be a jerk and lay out for them their horrible chance of hitting and started to work out all the minuses the scum’s player just shrugged tossed the dice and they happened to land on an 01… So setting aside the rulebook and prying my head out of my face palm I cringed and we continued.

Starting with the fact that there was now a huge hole in the demon, AND he could see stars through the hole.  Hull breach anyone?

Well the good news is the chaos cultists got squeezed out of the ship through a boiling hot hole slightly larger than a fist.  The better news is the demon host was pulled back into the hole and got stuck, giving the party a moment of time.  The BAD news came a second later when a horrible klaxon sounded that only the tech priest understood and he took off running like hell shouting something about plasma venting.

The next three rounds were ones of intense rolls… seeing as the scum wouldn’t drop her damm lascannon and had already named it susan…  as the party ran to get out of the area before it sealed down.  They just made it, of course, and clattered into the adjoining section just before the previous one totally sealed off and drive plasma was vented into it.

Looking up they were met by the captains chief militant commander and his armsmen who looked at the lascannon like something out of a bad comedy, grabbed it and shuttled the damm thing off while the militant stormed away.  The armsmen started laughing at the party then they too started to leave.  When asked why one let the secret drop.

It appeared everyone knew where the “warp anomaly” was and the party had just been allowed to go in under the assumption they’d hold it down just long enough for the captain to vent drive plasma on it.

The party’s love affair with the captain began whole heartedly.

 This is completely brilliant! I am loving it so far, and it's giving me tons of ideas for my own campaign. Please continue!

Why thank you.  Support and comments are always appreciated.

Btw, there will almost assuredly be a few spelling errors here and there because my copy of MS Works I’m writing on likes to “fix” some of the words so I’m adding them as I go along.  Also I usually write stories so I’m almost assuredly going to wander more into story narrative than simple “this is the plan” synopsis, especially since this stuff has already played out and I like telling people how the party did.

As the Pride of Vincenti toils along through space to it’s jump point, praying to avoid the shadow of the warp, we find ourselves in our next weeks activities.  As of note the cast of characters has changed a little.  Currently the psyker is in medbay for extensive taser burns and is unavailable.  Also the mechanicus is hanging on the outside of the ship fixing a particular hull breach that well, let’s just say proved necessary but inconvenient.  On the good side someone actually dug up the assassin we were supposed to have in the first place, sneaky bugger picked the wrong place for a nap and nobody could find him for a while.

So we’re set up for things this adventure idea has been named “Spook Hunt”, is noticeably less tongue in cheek, and starts in one of the ships many low class galley. 

In the galley we find the three available party members sitting alongside our fellow from the last mission Antaeus Marton.  All four are generally eating the lower class rations available to the crew, which strikes the party as odd given Antaeus’s previous standing.  The man, clearly depressed and happy to share his misery explains to the group that he spent all his funds getting the exorbitantly priced tickets for himself and his girlfriend Tanna.  To make matters worse Tanna, finding out he was stretched for cash at the moment, immediately dumped him and went on looking for richer fare.  He bemoans the turn of events for another moment before the assassin leans over and kills him in his soup, explaining he doesn’t like whiners.  Not only doesn’t this phase the other people at the table, but the feral scum catches the dead man’s head before he hits the soup and proceeds to eat his too.

In a few moments there is a page for a number of the ships armed “troubleshooter” groups, five of them in all.  Most are being called to the munitorium, but group one, namely the party, is called up to Paelorin’s quarters.

Leaving their soup behind the available party members head to the main elevator, one primarily used for going up to the higher ranks quarters.  Walking past an entire hallway of people doing nothing but walking on giant stair masters the group waits for the elevator and gets on when it arrives.  A few minutes of being raised up to the top by those poor people in the gerbil wheels later they hit the top.

Stepping off the elevator the party finds their surroundings greatly changed, something the priest knows of but the others are unused to.  Looking around they could swear they were in a great marble cathedral instead of a starship.  Every surface is covered by polished marble with gold patterns in relief.  An aide greets them walking between the gilded columns and leads them along the white stone hallways to a side door marked with the name Paelorin and a bunch of other gibberish about accomplishments and such that means little even to the party members that CAN read.  The door opens and the party members step within.

With their first sight of Paelorin(honestly the second they’d met him briefly before) the party can tell they’re going to like him.  Instead of being coated with marble his room is plain out to the walls and ducts like a lower class bunk, but beyond that every conceivable surface is coated with weapons.  Rifles, pistols, close combat weapons of every sort line the walls, and crates of different types of ammo sit here and there where there’s room around the basic bedding, tables and amenities.  The man himself is in the middle of the room cleaning and looking to one of his collection.

Putting the bolter away Paelorin chats with the party about random things for a while before he gets to business.  The illustrious Vincenti, master Rogue Trader, has decided that morale is too low for his liking.  In accordance to this he has ordered up a number of his troubleshooter groups for what he considers a morale boosting assignment.

Paelorin, looking like he’s swallowed something disgusting, hands the party a data slate that has a small portion of the ship outlined on it.  The area isn’t too large, three decks and only a few dozen compartments on each, all in the under decks.  The assignment, which seems routine for the ship, is to go down to those sections of the decks, bring all the teams and their weapons…

And kill everyone there.

As the party blathers a sudden deluge of wtf Paelorin waves them down.  He explains that this is how the trader does things, by direct order, and he can’t countermand it.  Not only that but this isn’t exactly the ships first rodeo.  The trader believes random purges will scare the crew into behaving better, and doesn’t really take into account the fact that just killing random people for no good reason won’t exactly foster the correct anti mutinous environment.

With a bit of disbelief still evident the party questions Paelorin on the assignment and find that while he can’t countermand the order of the trader the militant isn’t exactly a moron on the matter either.  With a few smart questions the party figures out the plan Paelorin uses.  Quite simply the orders are only to kill the people who are found in the area at the time of the purge, people who are not found, or happen to leave the area, aren’t considered targets for the purge.  The party also is allowed to persecute the purge in any manner they deem necessary.  With this information, a smile and a nod, the party is dismissed.

Heading back down to the munitorium the party gets into a conversation on what exactly they should do about the Rogue Trader.  The prevailing theory is he needs to die.  Working out how rattles the brains of the current members.

Arriving at the munitorium the party finds three of the four armed groups kitting up.  The fourth is no where to be seen.  The party immediately goes to kit up themselves.

Remembering the psyker took a pair of hormagaunt claws in the last assignment and had left them here to be converted to weapons the feral checks up on them and finds that only one is still available.  No amount of badgering, arm twisting or intimidation gets her the answers she needs on where the other one went.  Grumbling she heads back to the party, makes a quick awareness check and spots something laying out on a crate in another room.

Sneaking in, the feral slips over to the item and checks it out.  While she can’t quite figure what the small thing is she can figure out it’s some sort of gun with a clip of four really big bullets, though she can’t find a grip anywhere on it.  Not one to waste an opportunity to grab a weapon the feral pockets it.

Back with the party the priest is giving everyone their orders.  They are to all go to one side of the delineated area and sweep across slowly killing everyone they find.  Some of the gunmen are aghast, some are just “not this @#$% again” while the feral pops up and is just happy to kill anything they point her at.

Fully armed, up and running, the party and their fifteen supporters jog out to the kill zone.  Entering they close the door behind them and spread out into what they find is a large, only minimally staffed and ill lit laundry.   Getting funny looks from the workers there, some coming up to ask questions, the group opens fire.  A number of workers splatter, the others bolt in all directions.

Holding up a hand to call the ceasefire the priest and scum move forward.  The assassin, rather unimpressed by all this crud hangs back, not willing to waste hunting rifle rounds on innocent people.

The party moves forward slowly.  They shoot at who they see, killing those too slow or stupid to run, and keep a sluggish pace so anyone with a brain will know to get the hell out of there.  While it’s an unopposed  slaughter, they only manage to kill six or seven people of the who knows how many dozen that should have been in the area.

Following on the end the assassin picks up someone sneaking away out of the corner of his eye and decides to shoot.  He wings his target and other party members close on the person.  Instead of one target they find two, one laying down shot, the other scurrying off behind a door.   These people however are covered in rags, the warping and distortion on the face of the shot one is enough to make the other troubleshooters gasp and make the sign of the Aquila on their chests.  They had found a mutant, and it set the priest into a rage.

Their guns ringing out in chorus the first mutant, identified as a “hull-ghast” is put down, and the priest rushes off to take down the other one.  Kicking his way through the door the priest finds a small, empty room in front of him.   Confusion reigns.  The other party members come up and give the small chamber a thorough going over.  A few moments later one of them peels back a thin piece of siding to show a corridor traveling off below them.

The priest checks the map and finds the hidden spot was definitely in the kill area and grinning declares that they’ll make up their kills on hull-ghasts instead of noble crewmembers.  A rope is lowered down to the darkness, glow globes are activated and a disposable gunman kicked down the rope.  Calling up that all he’s found is ankle deep water the gunman moves out of the way for a bunch of others to come down.

The party at this point decides to split up, the assassin, lackadaisical about the whole thing anyway, goes on with a team to clear the under deck area, while the priest and the feral take two teams to clear the between decks.  While the assassin heads on his way the rest of the party fans out and finds themselves in a corridor.  Lamp packs on their rifles they head out.  Finding one way blocked and the other coming to a corner they carefully peek around and notice a body on the floor in the dirty water.  The priest moves with cover from the others over to the corpse and finds it’s a young officer from the upper decks, maybe a midshipman since he doesn’t know much about their ranks.

As everyone else comes up and starts clearing the hallway the pair of party members assess the body.  The cause of death seems odd to note at first.  There are only a number of odd wounds in the corpse’s chest, none of which look fatal.  On turning him over though they find cause of death rather easy to determine.  The back of the man’s skull is missing and his brain is gone.

 Genestealer mutants…?

PURGE THEM ALL

Continuing from above:

With the corpse fresh before him and no idea how to proceed the Priest tapped his com bead and checked in with Paelorin.  A few descriptions followed, but things got going when the militant pointed out there was a camera in the data slate they were using.  A few pictures said more than the priest was getting across and Paelorin called on them to continue while he did some research.

Getting on their way again the priest and the scum found themselves wading in knee deep water along with their ten men as they continued a short way to a T intersection.  To the left it was dark and narrow, with a door along the far side of the hall.  On the right it opened up some and there was more light.  The group broke out their lamp packs, while their men lit the laser dot sights on their lasrifles and scanned around.  It wasn’t long before they heard a whimpering coming from behind the door and they moved over to check.

A planted foot brought the rusted door down with a loud splash and the party entered, shining their lights this way and that.  In the nearest corner of the square room, off to the right they found a young mutant mewling but before they could act on their find he was pulled under the water forcibly with another splash.  The group ran over to the spot and found the wall there didn’t go all the way to the bottom, though the opening was totally submerged.  With rather unusual restraint the players decided to neither go through the hole or kick a subordinate down into it, and instead sloshed back to the doorway to check for a way around.

The group headed along the side of the wall the mutant had disappeared under and found the widening hallway also had an upward slant, getting them more and more out of the water.  By the time they cleared the muck they were in a corridor so wide it could be considered a room, large enough for vehicles to move through.  Also they had sporadic lighting coming from above every dozen or so meters.  Instead of improving visibility however the on and off lighting actually made the shadows even harder to see into.

It was the scum and a few of the gunmen that heard the growling and clanking first, coming from far down the hall.  In the flickering alleys of light they could just make out a mass moving towards them, still quite distant, though not what it was.  The priest ordered a defensive formation and everyone lined in two ranks, one kneeling one standing and scanned the darkness before them trying to make out what was coming.

A few tense moments passed as the sounds got closer and the priest decided to call the assassin and his crew down, just in case.  As the group on the upper deck rushed back to the descent room the party in between decks got a glimpse of what was bearing down on them.   More than a dozen misshapen forms were coming from the darkness.  Some small, some huge, all with the characteristic deformations of hull-ghasts.  The priest called for the line to start firing as the hull-ghasts charged, some running on both legs others with a deceptively fast limp or crawl.

The darkness was split by the flash-crack of lasgun fire and the silence was broken by the roar of shotguns.  A few mutants were pulled down but the largest abominations held up easily to the scattered, ill aimed firing.  The party managed one barrage, then another, and a third with the ghasts right on top of them.  With a roar the mutants charged in, the defenders switching to close combat weapons a moment before they were bowled into by monstrous stinking flesh.  With desperate abandon combat was joined.

Mutants swung down with club and hammer at the humans who stabbed back with bayonets and swords.  The melee was fast paced slice slam and stab.  In the gaming room dice were lifted and thrown, and in what must have been the most spectacular display of combat prowess ever sighted on board the Pride…

Every damn combatant missed.  On both sides… Then again… and once more for good measure.  The damn whiff war to end all whiffing.

Seeing his group having a bit of difficulty the biggest mutant decided to try something different.  Rising to his full hulking height the beast raised his war hammer high and bellowed out his best intimidating roar.  Two of the gunmen lackeys managed to flub their willpower check and ran like hell.  Everybody else just looked at the creature and waved their hands in front of their face to get the armpit stink away.

Bellowing his greatness at finally taking someone out of the fight the giant mutant suddenly keeled over with a bullet hole in his head.  The assassin, having finally made it down the halls and into line of sight had spotted the big thing standing over all those around him, aimed and shot the darn thing dead.

With the mutants having stood back just out of melee for a moment to watch their big fellow drop the close up party members all whipped out their shotguns and proceeded to make point blank mutant goo.    Lasrifles cracked death in the close confines before the mutants could get back into the fray.

The assassin, sending the rest of his men forward, went down on one knee, avoided getting run over by the still fleeing gunmen(and more miraculously resisted shooting them) then popped a precision shot down low through the mess, his bullet finding the other large mutant in the dangly bits and putting yet another large target on the ground.  Behind him the running gunmen dashed through the open doorway, hefted the door out of the goop and slammed it shut behind them.

With the tide and numbers turned the mutants made a go of it for a few more rounds before breaking and fleeing back into the darkness when there were only a few left.  Happily the group made it out with only scrapes and bruises, except for one gunman who had a ringing headache from a war hammer but nothing worse.  The party got back together, joking around with each other and patting backs for a job well done when the issue of the fled gunman came up.  The priest and the scum weren’t particularly worried since there weren’t exactly any good ways out of the room they’d gone into except for the door.

With a good tally of hull-ghasts under their belt the group started to head back to the under decks, planning on picking up their runners on the way through.  Sloshing down the hall they were interrupted by the sound of panicked fire and screaming.  One of the runners smashed his way through the closed door, turned around and shouted something into the room before opening up with his lasgun a few times into the darkness.

Outdistancing their subordinates the priest and scum raced up to the door, shouldered the panicked man aside and aimed into the portal.  What they saw chilled them.  The last runner was in the room, convulsing and bleeding as he floated in the air, his hands around his neck and eyes bugging out of his skull.  He didn’t seem to be floating by himself but there was absolutely nothing but blank air above him.  Reaching to the side the priest grabbed a lasgun with laser dot scope and pointed it above the floating man.  The beam hit something solid above him and wouldn’t pass through.

Cursing the priest and scum opened up.  There was a screech and the man dropped to the floor with a splash.  In a moment half a dozen men had moved up to the entrance and were firing in blasting away at what appeared to be nothing.   A fell wind blew past the group and they moved in quietly, scanning around with laser dots.  Nowhere did the lasers find interference.  Looking around they noticed they were down to twelve when, with the one they’d sent back to get his head bandaged, and the one in the middle of the room, they should have had thirteen.

Checking their fallen man they found him dead, with the back half of his skull ripped off and his brain missing.  Not one to miss an opportunity the scum grabbed his shotgun and they left him there, for whatever cleaning crew would have to come along later to take care of their victims anyway.  They had bigger problems now, namely whatever had killed him.  With no ability to detect the thing they decided to head back up to the under decks and guard the way down.

On the short way back the group kept a close eye on their companions, making sure no one else vanished.  It was scary going scaling the rope they’d left back up to the under decks but soon everyone had and for more security they even collected the rope and set guards on the entrance.

As they looked around, making sure they were clear, Paelorin contacted them with news.  It seemed the fourth team they were missing was an older group, much used to the unusual orders of the Rogue Trader and bloodthirsty in the extreme.  Paelorin was almost sure they’d gotten themselves together and gone on a killing spree somewhere in the marked area before the party had gotten there.  Taking this in the priest informed the militant that they hadn’t found the fourth group but they had encountered an invisible, brain eating killer on their search between decks.  Instead of a response they could only hear scrambling and random noise on Paelorin’s side of the line before it cut off.

Looking around confused about how their conversation had ended the party noticed something off.  A quick headcount picked up only eleven gunman.  One had gone missing during the conversation and no one had seen where he’d gone, or even that he’d left.  What was worse, it was one of the people milling around the hallway outside the room with the passage between decks, not one of the guards.  Suddenly it seemed quite possible the invisible killer had a way into the under decks that had nothing to do with the one they’d found.  Another barrage of curses were cut off by the sound of gunfire in heavy volume coming from the decks above them.  It sounded like the fourth armed group was definitely up there somewhere.

Sticking tightly together the party quickly found the stairs up and headed that way.  They looked over the data slate map closely, trying to figure out by sound where the firing was coming from but couldn’t pinpoint it very well.  The firing was going on nonstop, with little time for even reloading.  It sounded much more like panicked firing than careful hunting.  Coming up with another idea the priest checked the map for every defensible location in the area on that level.  He came up with a couple of spots as the shooting heightened pace then dwindled away.

Rushing to the first area, a room that looked like it was only accessed by one long, straight, corridor they found the entrance hall scoured with las and shot hits.  Someone had been firing down that hallway with a lot of firepower, coating it from floor to ceiling.  The priest posted guards on both sides of the entrance as all eyes tried to peer down the long hallway to get a glimpse in the room at the end.

Positioning their men to cover them the priest and scum began to sneak up the hallway, slowly and quietly under the watchful eye of the assassin and group.  In the room before them they noticed a pile of bloody offal cluttered in the center.  Grumbling they sped up and found the remains of their fourth team, chopped to bloody pieces.  Circling around the group used laser dots to scan every area they could think of, but found the room was open at the top.  If the thing was as good at climbing as it seemed it could have easily gotten in above everyone’s aim to do the killing they’d found.

To make matters worse the priest found he couldn’t vox bead back to the assassin or anyone else, anywhere on the ship.  It seemed comms were down.  The scum was even more upset, all the weaponry and even the auspex from the dead team had been destroyed by their attacker.

On the other end of the hall, with his men around him, the assassin moved his head from the sights of the hunting rifle and was preparing to give them orders when one of the men the priest had left watching the corridor from the other side simply disappeared before his eyes.  Running the scene back in his mind it had looked as if the man had been pulled from behind straight into the darkness.

The assassin ordered his men to fan out while he called back to the scum and priest.  As soon as the party got together they scanned the darkened hall with their glow lamps and spotted an unmoving form, prone on the ground near the next intersection.

They kept everyone close as they moved slowly up and checked the body.  This one didn’t have a missing brain, cause of death seemed to be a large slash on his torso, but he did have those odd puncture wounds on his back.

Shaking his head the priest couldn’t make heads or tails out of things.  Then out on the edge of his consciousness he just made out a slight scratching noise on the ceiling barely a meter above him.

Continued:

Now if you haven’t guessed it yet, yes we’re dealing with a Lictor specifically from the Deathwatch monsters book.  I know I know that’s a little cruel on a party barely into their second level so I altered a few things to make it more manageable.

First off something has happened to this lictor to remove it’s unnatural toughness.  4 toughness and 6 armor is far easier to deal with than 8 toughness and 6 armor any day of the week.  I’m assuming the ride up on the outside of the halo barge exposed Mr. Licky to some very un-nice conditions and who knows what he crawled into in the bowels of a ship that could have really messed up his day.

Secondly, I made detecting him a bit easier.  Simply put I allowed the party to pick up the lictor as an unopposed roll.  Given this was at -30 due to chameleonic scales it’s not a great chance but it’s a hell of a lot better than them at -30 and him at +20 and unnatural agility.  I wasn’t going there.

On that note guess who just rolled like a 08 on his awareness test?  Mr. Priest of course.  Not needing even a second to think about it he simply points his shotgun up and pulls the trigger.  I am presented with an interesting thought on this, since the ceiling is only two meters away.  Of those two meters we find one of them is taken up by a rather large lictor which he has absolutely no way of possibly missing given a working gun.  So this roll isn’t exactly about hitting or not, but how well he hits and god-emperor help him if he jams.

He rolls around a 15, suffice to say not a miss.  In fact the number of hits blows half the lictors wounds off.  With a whew and a thank the emp myself he didn’t manage righteous fury(or I’d be fudging like mad right now) I inform him that he, the party and their minions are now coated with purple ichor and something very unhappy is screeching at them.

In the resulting confusion everyone else manages to miss so badly I’m surprised they hit the ship they were riding in.  The lictor, bleeding a bit still, takes off along the ceiling and with that “how can something that big move so fast” speed it has, gets the hell outta dodge.

By now even the people who never played 40k before pretty much knew what was up, and just how unlikely it would be for them to handle it alone.  Trying to call out they find their combeads blocked and the local com systems not working.

Now the party quite well knows what kind of pain in the azz their Rogue Trader is, and figure pretty quickly what steps he was capable of taking in such a situation.  Their answer to this is to high tail it out of there.  At least to their relief the area is deep in the ship and far from the engine so it can’t be realistically vented to space or flushed with drive plasma.  Back they run to the laundry room only to find the exit sealed off.

A few minutes and a rather ear reddening spate of curses later the party tries the coms system to Paelorin, only to find themselves still blocked.  It looks like the area they’re in isn’t exactly high priority.  Who knows what the higher ups might do to kill off an invisible stalker.

As they debate their current situation a shout comes from one of the other entrances to the laundry room.  One of their remaining men is missing and another one is blaring lasrifle fire down the darkened hallway.  Before the party can reach him the gunman is bisected by a huge blade and falls in two while something from out of a nightmare stalks its way into the room.

Fear(3) everybody! Have fun!  Licky in da haus!

The bevy of gunmen, I barely remember how many anymore, all fail horribly and bolt.  The party… all at twenty off their willpower.  Yeah, they made it, all made it, handily, no problems.  Well there goes one little side arc of a mutant saving the lone fleeing party member, but oh well.

Wheeling on the tyranid the party lets loose with everything, and even though there are only three of them left the accuracy of their fire starts knocking bits off the giant creature.  Caught out in the open and not expecting such resistance the lictor vanishes from sight and slinks away, leaving the party without support.

Curses abound as the priest, scum and assassin review what’s going on.  The obvious stuff is pointed out and mulled over quickly enough.  To make matters worse the assassin makes note that the lictor has an unknown way down into the between decks, which renders all attempts to trap it using the seals of the under decks pretty useless.  It also however leaves them with a way out, and they pile into the room with the secret corridor.

Lifting the panel the scum almost gets his head lased off.  It looks like they found some of their fled comrades, about three of them, down in the goo.  Shouting orders the group lowers themselves down into the between deck with the gunmen just in time for a huge claw to cut through the secret panel.  A burst of gunfire drives the attacker back and the party with their help slink away then run like hell.

Splashing through the water some awareness checks pick up the lonesome sound of crying again.  Remembering the childish mutant the party sifts around for them and finds a pair of mutants in one of the back rooms.  Though it rubs the mutant hating priest the wrong way even he finds he can’t be against helping them away in exchange for a way out.  The mutants have simply been down here longer and know their way around, something the party can’t say.

Dragging the childish mutant with them the smarter mutant, a simple twist with scales instead of skin, points them the way.  They splash along in deeper water as the hallways open out into large corridors.  Behind them they pick up more splashing coming their way.  They hadn’t been exactly stealthy about their flight.

To their surprise the splashing turns out to be another three of their gunmen.  Calls to them to get over here die in the throats of the party as a large shape splashes down in the water behind the men.  The lictor has caught up yet again.  The assassin tries a shot with his sniper rifle, but can’t get a clear line on the slunk low beast behind the men.  As the lictor chases them one of the men, then another dives into the water, taking their chances hidden in the murk as the tyranid slices down the third.

Then the area around the lictor disappears into a wave of explosions.  Everyone hit’s the deck as a roar of rapid chunk whoosh boom fire blares past them.  The creature screams then dives under the water.  There is a whine-clunk whine-clunk sound coming from behind them.

The scum’s eyes go wide and heart shaped as she and the rest pick themselves out of the gunk to see Paelorin walking up on them.  His black power armor is immaculate, his storm bolter still smokes.  Ordering the survivors up the militant takes quick stock of the reports he gets.  Handing the priest an auspex, as he was the only one with even untrained basic tech use, the warrior checks his ancient chainsword, jams a fresh drum on his storm bolter then commands them all forward.

Their spirits heavily buoyed by the presence of the heavily armed militant the party follows his orders.  Glancing around they notice only a trickle of blood where the mutants used to be, probably caught in Paelorin’s first blast.  The militant points out that it took so long for him to get down there because the only way was to descend a massive half kilometer tall wall of piping and access ladders from the upper decks.  He was concerned about the charge on his power armor so he was interested in getting things done down here rather quickly.

Now with five armed men, the party, and the heavily armed militant, the team has begun to look like something that could take on a tyranid and win.  They proceed forward scanning.  The next hour is taken up by quite a number of false starts and chasing sensor ghosts, annoying everyone.

Eventually they come to a large open room, possibly a hold.  The auspex picks up that the floor stops ten feet out into the chamber, dropping down to about thirty meters deep.  In addition to that there is a warm object, to small to be the lictor, about five meters down in the water.  The object is odd, shaped like a human form but with large amounts of cooler areas seemingly cut out of it.  The order of the day ends up being to kick one of the gunmen in there and check it out.

It took some time, and three dives into a dark depths of water with who knows what else mixed into it, before the form in the water came apart and the gunman surfaces with something odd.  A red robe, frayed and damaged, with a skull and cog symbol on it.  Up with the robe come a few human remains, but no where near a whole body’s worth.  The most interesting tidbit comes from a head which has had it’s brain scooped out, not that it was all there in the first place.

Cursing, Paelorin grabed up the auspex and tied it into the ship systems.  Having pulled knowledge from an officer, an armsman, probably a mutant or two, and now a tech priest the lictor probably knew the ship better than he did, and might just have some command codes he didn’t want getting out.  It took him only a second to realize his fears.  The heavy door to the upper decks, far atop the cliff of pipes and metal, a door which he had sealed, was hanging open.  Paelorin quickly ordered the gunmen on a path to the nearest exit to the under decks, hoping to get the word out, while he and the party headed for the climb.

The run to the ascending room was a fast and frantic one.  The idea of a lictor getting loose on the upper decks wasn’t one any wanted to contemplate, though having had a look up the massive pipe wall, the party generally came to the idea they didn’t really want to contemplate climbing THAT either, though they had no choice.   Everyone slung their larger guns and gear and got to climbing.  With that it was time for dice rolls and given the easy availability of handholds, ladders and general grips everyone started making the climb rather well.

With narrative time in full force the rounds of climbing went pretty quickly.  Only a few missed handholds necessitated a quick grab from someone else in the party here and there.  Paelorin in his power armor made the rolls best and was pretty well outdistancing everyone up the wall.

Narrative time stopped like a dropped clock as the militant started cursing above them.  Looking up the party realized he’d been snared by a number of fleshy hooks from somewhere above and was being pulled up.  The party raced to catch up as the militant drew his chainsword and began a frantic one handed fight against what lurked above him.

With the auspex back in his hands the priest managed to just point out the logical point where the lictor would be hiding but shotguns were out in the deadly hanging melee.  The assassin took this without concern, braced himself between a pair of pipes and pulled free his hunting rifle.  With a moment to aim he took a shot that smashed into something above Paelorin, and the party was forced to duck away as a large alien arm fell past them.

The scum, hungering for action and to help out her hero, paused in her ascent and whipped out her auto pistol.  Unable to auto fire into the melee she snapped off a single shot.  Unexpectedly she hit something telling.  In a moment a mass of claws, arms, blades and power armor fell past the party where they clung to the wall.  With a clank Paelorin managed to grab a pipe, bending it, and stop his fall but the mass of the lictor, hanging limp and probably dead, was still tied to him by a swarm of flesh hooks and his chainsword had fallen away in the scramble.

The closest to the militant the priest took the moment to reach over to the power armored warrior’s hanging storm bolter, aim it a little, and pull the trigger.  With the modifiers to his roll, the closeness of the hulking target, he managed an amazing four degrees of success.  The storm bolter roared reducing the lictor’s torso to a spray of battered pulp.  Adding it up he’d managed to do 40 points of damage to the lictor’s torso BEFORE damage rolls, along with his inevitable righteous fury roll.

Licky went squishy…  and fell back down the wall.

Paelorin grumbled that he was going to have to go get his chainsword, later, his suit had locked up and was out of power.
It took the party some more climbing to get the militant some help in the upper decks.  Things wrapped up rather quickly at this point.  A number of workers gathered to haul Paelorin back up to his room, while even more went down to retrieve the chainsword and notably the remains of the lictor.

The Rogue Trader had need of what was left of the beast for his trophy room.

The scum was beginning to figure out where their missing hormagaunt blade sword had probably found it’s way to.

Tune in next time for adventures on a pleasure planet!  Look for drunken orgies!  Maniacal enemies!  And a pimped out chimera with hydraulics! Elfies and Cultists and Slanesshi oh my…

Parental discression advised.