The Glyphstone
2015-10-31, 12:40 AM
So I've finally managed to score a live game group after what feels like way too long of PbP-only gaming, and I was considering writing a campaign journal to share the crazy exploits of the group. After one session, I think this was a very good idea - I'm going to have to have somewhere to share the insanity.
These are the voyages of the starship Insert Ship Name Here...
Yeah. It's going to be that kind of game. No one could think of a good name for our starting ship (an extremely fragile Havoc-class raider with a pair of Sunsear Laser Batteries as its main armament), until it was proposed by yours truly that the ship never actually got named when it commissioned; a paperwork error got the forms stamped and sealed and bonded before anyone realized the name of the vessel hadn't been assigned. Ten thousand years later, the Administratum still hasn't caught up to this bureaucratic snarl.
Anyways, our cast of heroes...anti-heroes...Okay so we're all a bunch of freaks and psychos.
-Moi, Malakai the Explorator. Born downwind of the toxic slag pits of the forge world Hesh, Malakai is big. Really big. Ogryn-sized big, with the Brute and Hulking mutations (bought both via Contaminated Environs and Tainted origin paths). He was in fact mistaken for an Ogryn at first, conscripted into the Skiitari, and when he was given Bone'ead surgery the cortex implant raised him from human intelligence to superhuman intelligence instead of the expected Ogryn-to-human boost, the first of a chain of errors and somewhat questionable decisions that ended with him as an initiate in the AdMech. His dream is to be one of the Tech-priests who go full Robocop, replacing all of his tainted mutant flesh with nice shiny holy bionics one Acquisition at a time.
-Xanatos the Navigator. With an Unnatural Visage and Regeneration (rolled crazy well on the Navigator Mutations chart), he's basically Voldemort with a third eye of doom. Not as fleshed-out, but is apparently from a Renegade House on the outs with certain factions of the Inquisition, which will lead to Hilarity because our raider is apparently a decommissioned Inquisition fleet unit in addition to being ancient and incredibly fragile.
-Horatio the Seneschal. A new player to the system and universe, but one who's embraced it whole-heartedly with a smooth-talking con man capable of spinning the most ridiculous stories out of thin air then backing them up with equally ridiculously low Interaction rolls. He is the only character with any Interaction skills trained, or a Fellowship above 30.Unfortunately, he's also made of tissue paper, and has a hair-trigger temper that sets him off into a fury whenever he thinks someone is insulting him.
-Ghost the Arch-Militant. A sniper from Catachan, more or less Budget Sly Marbo. The player for this guy was very sleepy and left about half an hour into the session, so he never really got any face time. But he's also low-Fellowship with remarkably high Insanity for a starting character, just shy of his first trauma threshold.
No one wanted to be the Rogue Trader, so he was made an NPC who we met at the improvised start of the adventure (Into the Maw from the core book, so no spoilers plox). A utter fat slob, summarized as Baron Harkonnen on a bad day, and very much down on his luck due to catastrophic mismanagement of the dynasty's assets over the past few generations. Being his loyal and trusted officers - or at least the ones with the right combination of expendability and competence - we're sent down to Port Wander to look for interesting quest hooks Profit Factor opportunities.
Even before we hit dirt, we get a mysterious com transmission from a man who says he used to work for the RT's father, and insists we should come meet with him. This version of Port Wander we walk through apparently has never heard of the Inquisition, with vendors openly selling xenos relics and preserved xenos trophies/body parts, but no one accosts us (yet), and we find this mysterious contact in a run-down beggar's shack. He gives us a mysterious black pebble that contains the coordinates of a lost pirate cruiser loaded down with unimaginable wealth and treasure; unfortunately, a cyber-raven swoops down and steals it before he can explain further. Everyone gives chase, but when we return to the central market area, a gang of armsmen appear from the crowd and start trying to gun us down.
A somewhat comical fight ensues. Being effectively immune to small-arms fire with Toughness 60 and Armor 7 across most of his body, my Explorator tries his best to body-block the more fragile party members while repeatedly failing to hit with his boltgun. But with assassins on all sides, they can get around him and start shooting the squishy party members instead. One bullet sends Horatio into Critical Damage, which is not a good start, but then the assassins decide to throw a smoke grenade at us. Between the screaming civilians running in all directions and the smoke, no one can hit anything with any degree of accuracy except Ghost (run as an NPC since we needed his firepower) methodically shooting enemy legs off with his bolt pistol. Malakai gets frustrated and closes to melee with his power axe; he misses, but having the eight-foot-tall cyborg charge screaming out of the smoke cloud waving a giant axe is apparently more than that goon's paycheck covers and he flees. The Navigator runs out and tries to Lidless Stare a goon, fails, and eats a full-auto burst that puts him into Critical Damage too, while the Explorator goes axe-rampage on another thug. This one also decides to bolt, but Ghost finishes him off with a double Righteous Fury bolt shell.
Now the Arbites show up. As we (well, two of us) are the only ones standing, they arrest us on general principle, after our two casualties wake up from accumulated Fatigue. At the Arbites precinct, the chief arbitrator demands an explanation for our mayhem and murder and heaps of corpses. Explorator Malakai is happy to volunteer a download of his cortex cogitator's recording of the incident, which at least proves we didn't shoot first, but this is where Horatio starts to improvise, by hitting on the Judge in the most incredibly sleazy way you can imagine...Horatio's player is having a blast, but the -20 ad-hoc penalty to Charm is well deserved. Naturally, he rolls under a 10. Doesn't quite literally Charm the pants off her, but he follows up with another sub-10 Blather and a sub-10 Deceive while spinning a long story about how the black marble (which was recovered out of a dumpster somehow) was actually a long-lost family heirloom of our Rogue Trader, traditionally skipped across the surface of a lake on any planet the dynasty fleet visited, only to be lost years ago and just now recovered. After identifying the dead assassins as the armsmen of a Rogue Trader Fel, who is apparently our BBEG, we get our marble back and return to the ship. Being psychically charged somehow, we take it to the NPC Astropath onboard, who identifies it as containing a astropathically encoded map to where the lost treasure ship can be found.
But our ship's data-cores don't have detailed knowledge of the Koronus Expanse, so we need to return to Port Wander to find/buy/steal some. Horatio decides this is the perfect time to go trawling for info in the dirtiest, dingiest, most seedy bar on the Port (direct quote); this turns out to be an Undercity 'club' with openly mutant 'dancers'. The drinks at the bar are poured out of adamantine bottles and melt holes in the floor when they are spilled - Navigator Xanatos takes one sip on a bet and spends a few rounds in an impromptu Shock seizure. But more ridiculously good rolls ensue from the silver-tongued Horatio, dropping a stack of Thrones on the bar and asking about where he can buy the best maps of the Expanse, so the bartender (who apparently has a tentacle) gives him directions to some sort of undercity black market.
The session ends there, having already been thoroughly derailed from the printed adventure thanks to Leisure Suit Seneschal. Next week should be a doozy.
These are the voyages of the starship Insert Ship Name Here...
Yeah. It's going to be that kind of game. No one could think of a good name for our starting ship (an extremely fragile Havoc-class raider with a pair of Sunsear Laser Batteries as its main armament), until it was proposed by yours truly that the ship never actually got named when it commissioned; a paperwork error got the forms stamped and sealed and bonded before anyone realized the name of the vessel hadn't been assigned. Ten thousand years later, the Administratum still hasn't caught up to this bureaucratic snarl.
Anyways, our cast of heroes...anti-heroes...Okay so we're all a bunch of freaks and psychos.
-Moi, Malakai the Explorator. Born downwind of the toxic slag pits of the forge world Hesh, Malakai is big. Really big. Ogryn-sized big, with the Brute and Hulking mutations (bought both via Contaminated Environs and Tainted origin paths). He was in fact mistaken for an Ogryn at first, conscripted into the Skiitari, and when he was given Bone'ead surgery the cortex implant raised him from human intelligence to superhuman intelligence instead of the expected Ogryn-to-human boost, the first of a chain of errors and somewhat questionable decisions that ended with him as an initiate in the AdMech. His dream is to be one of the Tech-priests who go full Robocop, replacing all of his tainted mutant flesh with nice shiny holy bionics one Acquisition at a time.
-Xanatos the Navigator. With an Unnatural Visage and Regeneration (rolled crazy well on the Navigator Mutations chart), he's basically Voldemort with a third eye of doom. Not as fleshed-out, but is apparently from a Renegade House on the outs with certain factions of the Inquisition, which will lead to Hilarity because our raider is apparently a decommissioned Inquisition fleet unit in addition to being ancient and incredibly fragile.
-Horatio the Seneschal. A new player to the system and universe, but one who's embraced it whole-heartedly with a smooth-talking con man capable of spinning the most ridiculous stories out of thin air then backing them up with equally ridiculously low Interaction rolls. He is the only character with any Interaction skills trained, or a Fellowship above 30.Unfortunately, he's also made of tissue paper, and has a hair-trigger temper that sets him off into a fury whenever he thinks someone is insulting him.
-Ghost the Arch-Militant. A sniper from Catachan, more or less Budget Sly Marbo. The player for this guy was very sleepy and left about half an hour into the session, so he never really got any face time. But he's also low-Fellowship with remarkably high Insanity for a starting character, just shy of his first trauma threshold.
No one wanted to be the Rogue Trader, so he was made an NPC who we met at the improvised start of the adventure (Into the Maw from the core book, so no spoilers plox). A utter fat slob, summarized as Baron Harkonnen on a bad day, and very much down on his luck due to catastrophic mismanagement of the dynasty's assets over the past few generations. Being his loyal and trusted officers - or at least the ones with the right combination of expendability and competence - we're sent down to Port Wander to look for interesting quest hooks Profit Factor opportunities.
Even before we hit dirt, we get a mysterious com transmission from a man who says he used to work for the RT's father, and insists we should come meet with him. This version of Port Wander we walk through apparently has never heard of the Inquisition, with vendors openly selling xenos relics and preserved xenos trophies/body parts, but no one accosts us (yet), and we find this mysterious contact in a run-down beggar's shack. He gives us a mysterious black pebble that contains the coordinates of a lost pirate cruiser loaded down with unimaginable wealth and treasure; unfortunately, a cyber-raven swoops down and steals it before he can explain further. Everyone gives chase, but when we return to the central market area, a gang of armsmen appear from the crowd and start trying to gun us down.
A somewhat comical fight ensues. Being effectively immune to small-arms fire with Toughness 60 and Armor 7 across most of his body, my Explorator tries his best to body-block the more fragile party members while repeatedly failing to hit with his boltgun. But with assassins on all sides, they can get around him and start shooting the squishy party members instead. One bullet sends Horatio into Critical Damage, which is not a good start, but then the assassins decide to throw a smoke grenade at us. Between the screaming civilians running in all directions and the smoke, no one can hit anything with any degree of accuracy except Ghost (run as an NPC since we needed his firepower) methodically shooting enemy legs off with his bolt pistol. Malakai gets frustrated and closes to melee with his power axe; he misses, but having the eight-foot-tall cyborg charge screaming out of the smoke cloud waving a giant axe is apparently more than that goon's paycheck covers and he flees. The Navigator runs out and tries to Lidless Stare a goon, fails, and eats a full-auto burst that puts him into Critical Damage too, while the Explorator goes axe-rampage on another thug. This one also decides to bolt, but Ghost finishes him off with a double Righteous Fury bolt shell.
Now the Arbites show up. As we (well, two of us) are the only ones standing, they arrest us on general principle, after our two casualties wake up from accumulated Fatigue. At the Arbites precinct, the chief arbitrator demands an explanation for our mayhem and murder and heaps of corpses. Explorator Malakai is happy to volunteer a download of his cortex cogitator's recording of the incident, which at least proves we didn't shoot first, but this is where Horatio starts to improvise, by hitting on the Judge in the most incredibly sleazy way you can imagine...Horatio's player is having a blast, but the -20 ad-hoc penalty to Charm is well deserved. Naturally, he rolls under a 10. Doesn't quite literally Charm the pants off her, but he follows up with another sub-10 Blather and a sub-10 Deceive while spinning a long story about how the black marble (which was recovered out of a dumpster somehow) was actually a long-lost family heirloom of our Rogue Trader, traditionally skipped across the surface of a lake on any planet the dynasty fleet visited, only to be lost years ago and just now recovered. After identifying the dead assassins as the armsmen of a Rogue Trader Fel, who is apparently our BBEG, we get our marble back and return to the ship. Being psychically charged somehow, we take it to the NPC Astropath onboard, who identifies it as containing a astropathically encoded map to where the lost treasure ship can be found.
But our ship's data-cores don't have detailed knowledge of the Koronus Expanse, so we need to return to Port Wander to find/buy/steal some. Horatio decides this is the perfect time to go trawling for info in the dirtiest, dingiest, most seedy bar on the Port (direct quote); this turns out to be an Undercity 'club' with openly mutant 'dancers'. The drinks at the bar are poured out of adamantine bottles and melt holes in the floor when they are spilled - Navigator Xanatos takes one sip on a bet and spends a few rounds in an impromptu Shock seizure. But more ridiculously good rolls ensue from the silver-tongued Horatio, dropping a stack of Thrones on the bar and asking about where he can buy the best maps of the Expanse, so the bartender (who apparently has a tentacle) gives him directions to some sort of undercity black market.
The session ends there, having already been thoroughly derailed from the printed adventure thanks to Leisure Suit Seneschal. Next week should be a doozy.