With Xmas just round the corner, the feeling of schadenfreude begins to suffuse me in ways that only tears on boxing day can quell.

But until then, and perhaps well after then, why don't we share a memorable death or two of either our characters, our friends character or even NPC's.

C'monm fess up with your Best (as in most Memorable, or Funny or GrimDark or even Totally Pointless) Way to die, it doest have to be from This game, any that you've been in should be fun to read about, though if you can keep it on DH/RT/DW tracks, even better.

I'll get us started..

From a recent game..

The group i run had infiltrated a Heretek Cult, and decided that they needed to get through an "obviously trapped in some foul and cunning xenos technological manner" door way. They decided to send the assassin (one Trix Roth who i've mentioned in the past and even done a story about in the fiction section), to turn off the power in some manner or other.

So off she goes, stalking through the compound until she finds a Standard Mars Pattern Shed with some black and yellow chevrons around the door and some kind of funny squiggly runes that look like a man being zapped by numerous lightening bolts, the rune she was told to look out for..

Ignoring the Big Rubber Gloves next to the door she pops it open, descends in to the Batterarium and promptly starts to feel a bit woozy.

In a fugue state she decided "to cut the Blue Wire", causing the generator to start to over load, unleashing its pent up electromagnetic/microwave fury on what ever was not insulated in the room.

Staggering to the stairs in pain, touching a metal bannister with her bare skin she promptly is electricuted to death, critting 9 on the Head & Body locations. Stumbles up the stairs on fire, with her skin cooking off as the fat from her body flash fries and her eyes pop.

The Techpriest suddenly remembers that the assassin has next to no real technical skill at all, and rushes off to find her and comes across her smouldering and still twitching corpse, realising that she's still infused with the raw power from the power generator down stairs he decides to siphon it off from her, plunging his augmetic arm/sword through her body, severing the spine and only just managing to ground the energy safely.

Leaving him with his flesh cooking off from his face where a skin graft didnt go as planned, the pins, staples and micro pistons beneath and flashing away.

Both players had to burn a Fate point, the Assassin so she could essentially remain "alive" though skinless, with some of her brain cooked off and her muscles all but making players hungry at the thought of bacon and sausages cooking..

The TP burnt his to get a reroll on a failed Medicae/techuse check to siphon off the power, which resulted in his only losing his skin graft.

The assassin has been packed in a stasis tube and will receive numerous implants (courtesy of having XP and Fate points set aside for the Cyber Reserrection grade 1 trait)

Needless to say the mission was a right mess up, the bad guys got away and the galaxy now has a new cult running round freely in it...

I love my players :)

But they really should consider asking for a little bit of cross skilling, especially as the assassin had worked with the TP for a couple of years now, she really should have picked up even basic tech use...

I love them, but i laugh at them. Actually, our whole group laughs at each other.

The laughter keeps us sane.

Ish.

So, what memorable death, or near death or just fun maiming tales have you to share?

My first post here! :D

I run a RT game for my group and our Explorator got a perfect "Arnie moment", making for a very messy NPC death, right out of American Psycho.

The Explorator and Navigator were trying to sneak past an Inquisitor's Honour Guard, creeping out onto a metal catwalk, and spotting one of the Honour Guard on the next level down, right below. Not having a great gun, he decided to drop his chainsword on the guy.

He looked up. *Zzzztnrrrrgh*

It buried itself to hilt, right through his head, and he pitched over the edge.

The Explorator turned to the Navigator and said; "I guess we got the drop on him."

Cue lolz.

Peace!

Ah, the beauty of the Play by forum I can just search for and paste my messiest character death so far. The group had been investigating suspected culitst activity on Grove's Fall when they uncovered a nest of heretics (NB all rolls have been removed as this is not a BBcode forum) :

Outside the Ju-Ju House

11:40 GST

Venrork's concentrated burst of Las shots peppered the wall around the crouching thugs and one of the bolts burned a neat hole through one of their eye sockets, vaporising his brain. He dropped without a sound. The familiar click of the microbead in Ven's ear and a quick, "In position," told Ven that Janniper 'Smiley' Costigan was back in the fray.

He loosed two quick bursts on the group approaching. The first burst stitched a thug with five rounds blowing him backwards in an explosion of bloody vapour. The second thug attempted to duck back as his comrade was pulverised but was fractionally too slow as the hail of bullets smashed into his legs, knocking him wimpering to the ground.

'Four down already, not bad' thought Ven, 'we may get out of this yet...' He was quickly pulled out of his revery as Smiley spoke in his ear. "That big fella is up to something, I can't get a clear shot." Ven had to take his word for it, the enemy had taken cover from the flak-storm that Ven and Smiley had kicked up on the approach to Ransom Court.

A chill wind swept up around the deserted court sending trash spinning and dust stinging Ven's cheek. Ven's blood froze from a horrific and unnatural cry that rent the air and with a clap of leathery wings a black shape took to the air from the position of the powerful leader:

And in the air Ven's gaze was filled by the great viperine creature, which had a curiously distorted head, and grotesquely great clawed appendages, supporting itself with ease by the aid of black rubbery wings of singularly monstrous dimensions. It flapped slowly across the court...

[After a few WP rolls later]

Something inside Ven snapped as the huge creature flew overhead. Its huge claws gripped the side of hab and then its sinuous neck darted once and then again.

Venrork could not tear his eyes away and the head came out with the body of Janniper Costigan gripped between its jaws. As it turned away from the building and launched into the air again, its long neck whipped around.

A trail of blood splashed across Venrork's face and he heard a sickening crunching before everything went black...

Inside the Ju-Ju House

Moving to peer out of the curtained window Jack's mouth drops open, then he shouted "Haven! Get yourself back here! We've got a really big problem!" Scrabbling backward he tried to shut the image from his mind. Flinging himself over the counter he dropped down behind it panting nervously...
 

Follow the game in progress here: www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/viewforum.php

Cheers, Hal

 In a Dark Heresy game I was part of, I decided to play the group's psyker - but eyepoppingly bad rolls for everything but willpower meant he turned out to be a frail, creepy little guy whose accent wildly varied from moment to moment, but generally acted with a kind of country-fried innocence to to horrible world he occupied.  On a foolish whim, I decided to spend my starting budget on a dozen frag grenades.

When it became apparent that my psyker wasn't good for much and was seriously disturbing the other characters with his demeanor, I took the precautionary measure of tying a piece of string through the pins on all the grenades.  I dubbed this the "rip cord" - a merciless option to reply to any character in game whose hatred of the witch was too broad ranging.

All the characters hated my psyker.  He was an ignorant, unsettling man with a habit of Weakening the Veil to get his powers to go off more option - and incidentally, causing more Psychic Phenomena.  He was considered the very worst example of a psyker - the reason such mutants were abhored as no-good deviants from humanity.

All this changed the day he accidentally trigged a Perils of the Warp roll which summoned a Horror of Tzeench a few feet from the group, its glistening tendrils and gibbering mouths writhing and whispering doom, respectively.  As a beginning Dark Heresy group, this seemed like it was going to tax us all the fate point.  But for me, it seemed that Sanctioned Psyker Mithras Marr had discovered his destiny.

Winning the initiative and flogging the Willpower check in a pair of provident rolls, my character strolled over to the Horror, somewhat nonchalant in his lethal adhesion to duty, and pulled the rip cord.

Needless to say, the resulting explosion annihilated him and the daemon, and left the cell, after only moments before having been certain of death, blinking in shock.

Now, everyone loved my psyker.  His selfless sacrifice and instant willingness to die to contain the terrible power within himself, and to slam shut the gates of oblivion in a fantastic hail of shrapnel and meat, have made him the very image of an Imperial Psyker's duty and mandatory courage.  The remaining characters collected the string with the grenade pins on it, dropped mid-stride and thus able to survive the explosion, and consider it a kind of charm, or relic.

Good times.
 

This isn't Dark Heresy, it's D&D, but it's still funny

I was DMing and I had my players exploring a system of natural underground caves, not quite Underdark but close.  At one point, they discovered a large cavern teeming with various fungal life. 

Before I continue, let me break down the party.  The smartest of my players is playing a fighter/duelinst, he usually plays intelligently and makes good choices.  The next player is a ninja.  She hadn't played D&D very much before, but she's a smart person and usually shows it at the gaming table.  The third player is a sorcerer.  He also was inexperienced, and he is one of those guys who is prone to doing dumb or foolhardy things to get lulz, but he usually stuck close by the ninja and was pretty good at getting out of the trouble he got into.  The fourth and final player is a drunken master, and he is the most ridiculously dumb player ever.  He is good at generating lulz and nothing else. 

So they're exploring this fungus filled cavern, and suddenly, without any kind of warning, the duelistwho happens to be the "smart" playerdecides for no apparent reason that he's going to pick a random mushroom off the ground and eat it. 

Naturally, I think to myself, "It will be a hallucinogenic mushroom, and if he fails the fortitude save he will start tripping balls."  So I tell him to roll fortitude. 

Natural 1.  He dies. 

The other 3 players decide to leave his body there, unlooted, and continue on.  After they leave the cavern, the demon that lives in the cave complex reanimates the fighter's corpse and sends it to kill his former comrades.  Due to some fantastically bad rolls on the part of the players, he kills the sorcerer and the ninja both.  The only reason the drunken master survives is because he got drunk and wandered off randomly and the fighter couldn't find him. 

From my recent Dead Cities game:

A nameless gestapo-like skulker was observing the acolytes. After being discovered and confronted, he ran and tried to exit from a roof down the fire escape, which breaks apart, and he falls down a long way and breaks his arm. The party's Assassin runs to the rescue to use his newly aquired Medicae skill, but fails horribly and according to the critical table "In a rain of blood, gore and meat, the arm is removed from the body. Screaming Incoherently, he twists about in agony a few moments before dying." :D

After this the party is wary of getting "help" from the Assassin ;)

 Definitely my old psyker...

Basically, the Psyker was a pyromancer who could pretty much kill everything tossed at him, as long as they were in range, and not shooting at him. So, with his awesome fire powers, he went a bit... crazy, and accumulated about 60 insanity and 60 corruption for using his powers too much and so on...

Then, we were sent to eliminate this group of cultists, and I had complained to GM for about 30 minutes, that there are no Mesh Pants in game, and I wanted one's since well... Legs are a larger area to hit than head. So I got the pants... basically they were the same thing as the hat, but location changed. 

So we went to the cultists hide out, I casted one little spell, and torched one apartment from the outside killing few cultists. Then they retaliated, and one teeny-weeny cultists with the stats of a civilian, took his autopistol, aimed at my head and shooted. The cultist hits, and ofcourse scores a righteous fury hit (yea, turned out that the cultist was not a cultist, but a civilian with 1 fate), and blows my unprotected head clean of the shoulders.

Thanks to that experience, I play now an extremely pragmatic Sister of Battle, and check the identity of everyone before I start shooting. So far after 5 games, 0 Insanity and 0 Corruption!

I dunno if "almost" counts, but our Psyker burnt his last fatepoint the other day under hilarious circumstances.

He has barely survived some critical damage, and is recovering from some psychic-suppressive drugs (Tattered Fates). He needs to manifest Toxic Siphon, to purge this drug completely and thus restore his full Psy Rating and unlock his more potent powers of healing.

So, staggering to his feet, bleeding all over he manages to manifest Toxic Siphon... and triggers a phenomena. Which becomes a Peril of the Warp, which turns out to be Psy-Blast. Which throws him 8 metres into the air.

Falling from 8 m results in some 9 in damage, which of course is enough to kill the poor Psyker.

Muhahahahahaaa!

Well, would have killed him had it not been for those pesky Fate Points.

In RT game i used to run (that we stopped for reasons i cant remember) we had a missionary. He was very much a fan of anything imperial and such. He was very strong in mind and body running around with a Power Hammer (used same stats as the mechanicus axe) and Power Armour.

So they we're having some trouble in the lower part of their ship, there was a grand uprising among their soldiers. Pretty much all of them run down there to see whats going on and to direct the battle. When they get down there they find out that there was an Enslaver infestation going on which scared them quite a bit. Everyone but the Missionary wanted to close the area off and cleanse it in some other fashion, so this Missionary charges forward to kill the Xenos scum.

The battle goes pretty much as follows: Enslaver atempts to dominate the missionary but he resist. He ends up killing 5 or 6 Enslavers by himself with them having no chance to fight back properly. In the end the groups Explorator shows up with his body guard Servitor with a multi-melta to kick some ass. The Enslavers eye their chance and dominates the Servitor and kills the Missionary.

He wasn't dead for good thanks to Fate points, but the Servitor didnt survive the following round as it was torn apart by an assault stopper.

This was the third session in my first role as a GM in a campaign set in the Tempestus Segmentum.

The characters had tracked their target to Hive Celarduis on  , one Oberon Kant. Through a series of deuctions and evidence gathering they found out that he had forged some identification documents  with the help of a man named Beloch,and that the Hive was now unde the effects of a Shadow Storm which stopped all planetary traffic. If Oberon Kant was still here, he wouldn't be leaving.

So, following a number of leads they decide to see if they can gather more information at a bar where Belcoh frequents. After moving into the bar Aranth Matthias (Adept) and  Zachary Grant (Guardsman), sit down at a table with a drink

'As the acolytes enter Larrens Den they notice the smell of stale smoke and cheap liquor hangs in the air. The place has seen better days though it still shows the hallmarks of Celarduin architecture a lot of the panels have been replaced with cheap metal patches. Here and there marks and stains sully the walls as locals go about their drinking business.

Looking around you notice a number of individuals and small groups of people.drinking and making a lot of raucous noise. Looking towards the bar you see the bartender sorting bottles and on the opposite side of the bar a haggard old man with 6 empty bottles in front of him.

‘Quiet down Caesar or ill throw you out’ yells the barman
‘I....I ....I’ll be...behave...*ha HAA HAA!* *cough* just give me another one of tho...those Kask beers would...would you..’

Down the far end of the bar you see a group of 3 men sitting at a table wearing what seems to be work over-alls, slightly soiled. One of them has a shock of red hair and is quite broad, boredering on the large side, the other two slightly smaller men, one with short cropped hair smoking a Lho-stick the other a particularly slim man knocking back a drink and bragging about his ‘winnings’.

Behind them a slim man with a cloak, covering his body, with dirty,relatively battered clothes on the inside and wearing a wide brimmed but low top hat he has detached look in his face, as if he's somewhere else. He takes a drink before lighting up a Lho stick. putting it in his mouth you notice the fingers of his gloves are part cut off as he glances back and the woman beside him, running his fingers through his facial hair. She is dressed in a low cut drab green ensemble the quality of which is distinctly working class. Her curled black hair touches past her shoulders and she looks at you briefly with an empty look in her eyes.

To the side two men talking quietly over a bottle of liquor. The first has a damaged eye, somewhat milky and is holding on to an old notebook with a bound leather cover. His medium length curly grey hair and a short beard frames his chubby face. The second man is somewhat smaller in stature with a look of concentration on his face . With no hair to speak of his features are fairly sharp, a pronounced nose occasionally sniffing the air as he takes a drink.

The barman himself looks like part of the furniture, his worn face betraying his age, a bionic implant replacing his left eye. With short dark hair and balding patches he wears a slightly damaged dark green shirt and an old apron giving you a glance before going back about his business.

After about 10-15 minutes they see a man walking out beside a wall, they may notice (Per+20) they can look behind and find Belloch. A large man of 5 foot 7 his girth is barely contained by his fine shirt and jacket. He is well presented, his curled hair slicked down swept across his forehead and a waxed moustache and beard completing the look. His long maroon coat and collar is set against the cream/white of his shirt. '

And after hearing the reports of  Pit Slaves connected to a murder that have escaped the local prcinct their fears are mad real as two figures, one large and the other a hulking beast of cybernetics and flesh move into the bar. Larren, the bar owner tells them he doesn't want 'their kind' and promptly pulls out a Blackhammer and aims it at the back of the smaller ones head. A number of other patrons in the bar start pulling out pieces and all hell breaks lose. In the ensuing fight the man with the wide brimmed hat is clipped across the cheek by a stray shot, he then calmly gets out of his seat and puts a bullet right through the head of the unfortunate Imperial Citizen who caught him, revealing himself to be the new player in the group (we play online and he was just listening in earlier, it made for an awesome entrance as a scum metallican gunslinger). 

The player of Aranth literally says ' I'm not built for this *expletive*' and runs back round the corner as the small slave slaughters innocents with a breacher and the brute throws Larren across the bar.

Subsequently the Enforcers show up with stun rods and side-arms. The Guard player then says out of character that 'the big guy is just posing' as an Enforcer moves up behind him and tells him to lay down. He responds by turning round glaring angrily and shrugging off a number of bullets and then gathering up momentum and charging into the Enforcer and not stopping as he smashes through the bar wall and proceeds to heft the half dead law man onto an Enforcers vehicle bonnet, then through it, his reinforced clamps powering through the vehicle. Suffice to say that Enforcer wasn't going to be spending his pay cheque this month......
 

 I don't think I've I'm playing DH right, been playing the same Guardsman/Crusader for more than 3 years now and I've only burned one fate point.

A demon some how appeared on the ship we were traveling on and killed the captian of the ship.  So, my guardsman and a commissar busts into the captian's quarters and confronts said demon thing.  My guardsman charges it bare handed and lays a punch that goes into double righteous fury and drops the demon into about 7 critical damage to the head (we keep track of critical damage by body part).  Sadly demons can't get stunned, so it counter attacked and slapped my character straight though a wall of the ship breaking my character's neck (head criticals).  Burning a fate point ensured some emergency surgery and stuff, and thanks to being hardy my guardsman was up and around in no time.  Also got a neat plate in the head for +1 head armor.

 At a Loxatl controlled world in war the acolytes are placed to make sure an imperial cathedral is protected they have been the full right of the Inquisistion to reveal themselves and draft anyone to their cause. As they come to the cathedral it is protected by one faction from another and they are stuck between both factions, the guardsman in the group decides to help the attackers and charges with a melta bomb to blast up a wall. He suffers four rounds of fire (from multiple enemies with scary weapons) carrying several criticals and suffering bloodloss as he gets up to the wall and places the charge, he then turns to run, the next round first burns away all his flesh halving his Toughness and then kills him.

He did spend a fatepoint for it and in the aftermatch he is awarded the Medallion Crimson.

My group and I were investigating some strange deaths that were happening on this mining planet for our inquisitor's friend. My friend was playing a psyker it was our first scenario and he used his first psychic power which was a basic minor power called luck… He rolled a 9 on the thresh hold followed by a 76 in the psychic phenomena and then a 91 on the perils of the warp making him this intense daemon host in the middle of a tavern. I was too scared to do anything, the scum was in the ghetto doing drugs with the local gangs so he was useless. Then the guardsmen ran at him with a sword which did like nothing because he missed every attack. Then he made the other guardsmen pass out for the entire round. He then looked at me and fired a force barrage and firing 18 bolts at me, throwing me out of a window and the rest just utterly destroy what was left of my body. and when he killed everyone in the group the GM sent in a shadowbane to kill him… but it missed and he made everyone in the tank shoot each other and throw up on each other…Let's just say that planet is no longer alive…

My scum was on of two Acolytes that did not have Light Sleeper, and missed his perception roll to pickup on some assassins breaking in on us. Our Psyker, Arbitrator, and Tech-Priest all obliterate their attackers and my Scum barely managed to spring across the room to where he kept his custom pistol. He took a shotgun shot to the leg to critical mid-sprint and it looked like doom. The party was still a round away so I decided to attempt a disarm roll as the assassin approached for the coup de grace. Rolled an 01 and took the gun, and the assassin gave up and downed his cyanide.

Not a death per se, but my most memorable near-death experience was in Deathwatch. We were playing the first act of Emperor Protects, with a rather high-ranking team (I don't remember what rank exactly, but we were pretty buff). I was playing Brother Sathariel, a Librarian of the Consecrators Chapter. He was the most grimdark character I've ever made - a silent, sociopathic zealot who only joined Deathwatch to gain some intel on a possible Fallen Angel in the Reach.

Cue in the conclusion of the adventure, a big battle with hordes of genestealers. Due to reasons that I won't spoil, I ended up going solo against the leader of the genestealers, also a psyker. I withstood all his psychic attacks no problem, and closed distance to pound him to death with my force staff. There, the problems started. Neither one of us could land a solid blow. He didn't have much luck attacking me, but he also dodged all my attacks. So I spent a Fate Point to activate Killing Strike and deprive him of any chance of dodging. Roll to hit at a ridiculously high total… miss. Another fate point, another miss. And another. I was getting really pissed, so I thought, screw the bastard, and pushed Hellfire centered on him. There was no way he would dodge the gigantic ball of fire - but sadly, neither could I. One damage roll later, I was burning Fate with a crazy smile. You should have seen the faces of the rest of the team - momentarily they went from joyfully mocking my bad rolls to a full-on WTF expression.

After the other brothers finished off the enemy, they hauled my still-steaming body to the starship's medicae deck, where the Apothecary managed to patch me up - sadly, I was without a helmet then, so my face literally melted and got replaced with a creepy as hell iron mask. In recognition of my zealous hatred for the vile xenos, I was awarded one of the highest distinctions available to Astartes - a skull with a personal motto. Mine said, "Hate the Alien, Kill the Alien". Also, it started a sort of friendly rivalry between my character and, of all the people, a Black Templar Assault Marine.

All in all, totally worth it.

 my tech-priest player, being equal parts genius and moron, shot his melta at a guy who was covered with grenades. the genius comes in when he asked if the heat from the melta would set of the grenades (as this guy wasn't dead), the moron part comes in when he forgot this guy was taking cover in a rickety building with one good wall. 

Long story short, he tried arguing physics with the GM, the GM argued back, and he burnt a fate point when a 2 story rockrete building fell on him.