Monday 24 June 2019

Dark Heresy Spirebound: Part 3 FINALE

 The stage was set for the end of, well whatever it was our gang of Interrogators had gotten themselves roped into. They were all seated in a large ballroom where an exclusive, lavish gala was being held in the honour of the Gothic Sector Military Commander Thaddeus Hale by the local Planetary Governor and his sons, the Tarnell family. After some unusually vague instructions, presumably from their boss Inquisitor Caspiel Rex, the group had perused this party undercover and uncovered some very dark and heretical things, all evidence pointing towards the Tarnell sons planning....well something bad for this party, likely involving the Commander himself.

The party was now in full swing, with all the local and visiting nobles seated at a great ring of tables in an opulent marbled ballroom consuming a decadent array of food and drink and waiting for the main assembly to begin. In the centre of it all, Governer Albertus Tarnell and his sons Siris and Dimitrius were seated next to Sector Commander Thaddeus Hale and two of his bodyguards. The speeches were about to start and our party of heroes such as they were waited eagerly for the brothers to make a move, hoping they could save the Commander from whatever scheme they were planning.

An example setting picture of the Governor's Palace

At this point everyone at the Governor's table was now standing, and Siris took out a small silver bell and chimed it. As it chimed the live orchestral music stopped and the conversations in the room settled to a low murmur before quieting entirely. Siris cleared his throat and spoke, but it was not what anyone was expecting.

["Please remain calm. It is with no pleasure that I do this. Sector Commander Thaddeus Hale and Governor Albertus Tarnell, for crimes against the Imperium and the Emperor I have no choice but to sentence you both to death. Emperor have mercy on your souls."]

Several things happened concurrently.  Dimitrius pulled an extremely ornate pistol from its holster and fired it at the Governor, who had a glazed over look and could barely stand thanks to Caesar's drugs. The weapon hissed and a powerful melta beam erupted from it's barrel, utterly vaporizing his father Governor Albertus Tarnell from the waist up. Thaddeus Hale and his armsmen at the table both looked shocked but began to choke and cough as they attempted to act, collapsing on the table. As if on cue a troop of Tarnell house guards marched into the room, and the Naval Armsmen at the door were cut down in a fusillade of lasgun fire.

The assembled nobles, especially those from offworld, looked terrified. The house guard that had entered the room swept their lasguns across the assembly and the few bodyguards that attempted to make any sort of move were shot. This included the bodyguard of Lady Forscythe of Mordia, her attending guard was shot do death after drawing his power sword and it clattered to the floor next to his corpse.

However many of the nobles (all ones Yarrow saw as tainted in his vision, he was quick to point out in the aftermath) instead grinned and stood as well, ripping the tablecloths from their tables to reveal the surfaces had been engraved with the foul runes and iconography of the ruinous powers. Indeed the entire circular assembly of tables was a cleverly concealed and very large ritual circle for dark magic!

[GM'S NOTE

Now this may seem like an incredibly brazen act of treachery, and very shortsighted, but behind the curtain it did all follow a certain pattern for me. Firstly, the Tarnell brother's plot hinged nearly entirely on the artifact that was stolen. It had granted Siris great premonitions after he had inadvertently used it to contact dark warp entities, although the artifact itself was not born of Chaos. The planned ritual required the artifact to be done properly, but without it the Tarnell brothers were operating blind. Even so, they were unwilling to squander the schemes they had spent so long preparing and decided to attempt their plan without it. Their greatest folly, however, was assuming that the Rogue Trader Aleri was the architect of this theft and that their plans would be uncontested except by a few paltry bodyguards. Unfortunately for them both if there was one thing our gang of Interrogators knew how to do, it was ruin a nice party]

Our heroes however were not simply sitting idle. As soon as the shooting started they sprang into action. Caesar fired his laspistol at Siris, although the shots went wide and caused him to face the party in rage. Bram flexed his massive bulking muscles and attempted to flip the table towards the squad of soldiers who were leveling lasguns at them, exerting more effort than he was expecting when it became clear the table was actually bolted to the floor. Even so the legs shattered against his might and lasblasts began to smash into its blessedly thick surface rather than our heroes.

Siris himself, his face twisted in a dark and ugly grin, cast off the amulet he was wearing. It slammed into the marble floor far heavier than it had any right to be, and as it fell Yarrow and Demios became acutely aware of a terrible dark psyonic presence in the room. Siris' arm began to crack, twist and morph, his flesh reshaping into a horrifying appendage lined with small toothed mouths that were dripping and oozing white hot flame. He started walking towards Caesar, screaming about how they had ruined everything.

Caesar, ever the self-preservationist, dived to the side behind another table and fired twice into the back of one of the nobles who had stood and began chanting in spite of all the violence around. She slumped forward with a wheeze thanks to the new hole in her lung just before a swath of warp-flame burst from Siris' arm and consumed the whole table, narrowly missing Caesar.

Caesar Morroe, Hero of the Imperium


Yarrow, feeling equal parts vindicated at his vision and horrified at the tainted warp energy now swilling and swirling around the ballroom, took drastic action. He cast his heavy metal helmet to the ground with a clang, exposing his pallid and horribly burned visage to the glinting light. He drew energy inward before standing at full height over the edge of the table he was sheltering behind. His face locked in a snarl, he let out a battlecry and a massive swath of white-orange purifying flame began to flow from his mouth and sweep across the small troop of soldiers in the room. The first soldier hit fell immediately, his flesh burned to ash, but three more caught on fire and began to either shoot everywhere in a panic or run around trying to put it out. Demios, not to be outdone, once more added his own purple-chaotic flame to the mix killing another soldier, and once again the Warp turned back on him. This time however it simply locked him into his own mind and tormented him with awful visions, and he fell to the ground behind the table whimpering.

In the center of the room, seemingly oblivious to the carnage all around, Dimitrius had hefted Thaddeus Hale onto the massive symbol etched into the centre table and pulled a wicked ritual knife from his ornamented jacket. Tancred and Alcyone looked at each other before both sprinting into the fray. Alcyone's metachandrite autogun peppered one of the nearby soldiers with bullets and dropped him, as Bram clashed with the giant man. Dimitrius, not expecting such a brazen attack, took Bram's first blow to the chest and managed to parry the second. Alcyone was taken aback, normally a single blow like that would drop any normal human. She made an internal memo to tinker with Tancred's synthmuscle implants and see if more power could be added. Dimitrius snarled and once more hefted the ornate and ancient pistol. Bram BARELY managed to turn the weapon aside before it discharged, it's powerful anti-tank melta beam cutting a deep furrow into the marble floor.

At these brazen acts of violent defiance the several of the loyalist nobles still alive in the ballroom became emboldened. Two more bodyguards were shot down exchanging fire with the Tarnell soldiers in the room, a ruddy faced noble clad in furs and finery of Valhalla smashed an amasec bottle and drove the jagged glass edge into the neck of one of the chanting Draxis nobles laughing like a madman all the while, and even Lady Forscythe grabbed a dinner fork and stabbed it into the hand of the Draxis noble next to her, pinning the traitor's hand to the table and causing her to stop chanting and start screaming.

Sinric saw that two soldiers near the lovely Lady Forscythe were leveling their weapons at her and made his move. He scooped the powersword from the floor and dived in front of her, catching a lasblast to the gut and another grazing the side of his face and his arm, but leaving her miraculously unharmed. His body screamed out in pain, but even so he staggered towards the two soldiers, hacking and slashing at them with all the energy he had left even as they continued to fire into him in a panic.

Yarrow directed a second blast of fire at Siris, the flames scorching and blistering his fair features. Before Siris could retaliate a second set of laspistol shots whipped towards him, blasting a small hole in the side of his neck. Even with his newfound otherworldly resilience Siris was beginning to come apart at the seams. He turned to Caesar, screaming. "NO NO NO IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS!" and fired a massive gout of warpflame at the hapless Interrogator. This one found its mark, and Caesar's skin began to blister and burn as his uniform caught fire and he started to panic. The flames would likely consume him in short order.

In the centre of the room the two giants Tancred and Dimitrius were locked in a flurry of unarmed combat as Alcyone, having finished off the other soldier, had dropped low to investigate the health of Thaddeus Hale. Despite his lavish upbringing Dimitrius had trained extensively in unarmed combat and was masterful at bringing his significant strength to bear. Tancred however was fueled by faith and fury, not to mention the positively massive amount of synthetic muscle bolted to his frame below his archaic platemail. Dimitrius struck a telling blow to Bram's helmet and dented the side, only for Bram to fake left, go right and deliver a punishing jab that cracked Dimitrius' ribs. Below the clashing titans, Alcyone had determined using her diagnosticator implant that Hale had simply ingested a powerful sedative and would likely live. This concluded, she quickly dodged over to where her loyal bodyguard was locked in an intense struggle and struck out with the only melee weapon she had, a small but vicious chain scalpel attached to her medical metachandride protruding from the side of her head.

Dimitrius, reeling from Tancred's latest blow, was utterly unprepared for the small scalpel as it dug into the side of his head squarely. There was a whirring of adamantine teeth and a visceral spray of gore and cartilage as the little tool found its mark. She wrenched down on it with mechanical efficiency, nearly entirely removing the front part of corrupted and brutish noble's face. Dimitrius tried to scream but only a ragged gurgling came through. Not one to leave such an opportunity unclaimed, Tancred brought his massive hand up in a vicious backhand slap to what remained of Dimitrius' shattered face, eliciting another spray of blood and knocking him prone on his back before committing the traitor his just sentence.

"In the name of the Holy Inqusition, I pronounce you Excommunicate Traitoris. The sentence is death."

Mercilessly, Bram brought down one large plate steel boot hard onto his head. There was a wicked crunch and spray of brain and bone as the senior Tarnell brother and cultist conspirator paid the ultimate price for his crimes, his head crunching like a rotten melon.


Alcyone took a half second to indulge in a short moment of pride at the work of her prized creation, when all of a sudden she was startled by a gunshot coming from below. Thaddeus Hale had, by great force of will, drawn a sidearm and fired at a solider that neither Bram nor Alcyone had noticed was was sighting on them. The small caliber bullet tore into the soldiers shin and sent him sprawling to the floor screaming. The last of his strength spent, Hale collapsed once more.


Alcyone Saboris and her hulking bodyguard Tancred Bram
[GM'S NOTE

This was entirely unplanned and all thanks to the wonderful Dark Heresy critical tables. Dimitrius was very badly wounded from Bram's powerful blows. Alcyone's character joined the fray with her little chain scalpel mostly just to give Bram the team-up bonus, but her first attack hit and generated Emperor's Fury (basically a critical hit, I was running them old-style where it causes exploding damage dice.) As such the little tool did a lot of damage despite its profile only being like, 1d5+1. Because the Tarnell brothers were important foes I was using the player crit damage tables for them, and this fortuitous blow to the face had the following entry on the table:

In a splatter of skin and teeth, the attack removes most of the target’s face. The strike might not have slain him, but the target’s words are forever slurred as a result of this vicious injury. The target is Stunned for 1 round and suffers Blood Loss. He is permanently Blinded. Permanently reduce his Fellowship characteristic by 1d10

Worth noting this is the worst rending critical effect to the head that does not cause death, so he was literally on the brink when Bram executed him via Boot] 



On the other side of the room Caesar was in a very bad spot as the blaze of warpfire threatened to consume him. Then, something strange happened. The fire, seemingly for no reason, completely receded and went out as if by the hand of the Emperor himself. In that moment Siris knew for certain his dark gods had abandoned him and all his plotting and planning had been entirely for naught, undone by these meddlers. He attempted to scream, giving in to the hopelessness that washed over him. Even so, his fel arm readied another gout of flame as if unbidden.

Caesar seemingly having just witnessed a miracle and seeing the utter despair on the face of his adversary, fought through the pain of his scorched flesh and leveled his laspistol once more. There was a series of cracks as a pair of lasblasts found their mark, the first striking Siris right in the centre of the throat ending his babbling screams and the second impacting him squarely in the left eye, blowing the top of his head apart into smoking chunks.

At Siris' death a few of the Tarnell armsmen fell to the ground convulsing and bleeding from their eyes and mouth. The rest began a full route in complete panic, and gunfire could be heard out in the hallways. Behind the table nearly disintegrated from lasfire, Yarrow attending to his dark, foolish counterpart, having done his part in the battle saving Caesar's life from the fire about to consume him by controlling and dousing it with his own power.

The battle was done, and the ballroom had become a charnel house. The place was covered in ash and bullet holes, the air stunk of cordite, ozone and charred flesh. Bram, bloodlust still pumping in his augmetic veins, began systematically stamping the life out of the Tarnell armsmen who were caught in the throes of convulsion on the floor, and indeed killed the rest of the nobles who had been chanting in the ritual other than the one Forscythe had pinned to the table with a fork. Alcyone, after verifying the Sector Commander was not in imminent peril, carefully collected the extremely rare and valuable Inferno Pistol from next to the massive corpse of Dimitrius Tarnell. It was an exceedingly old and venerable design, far too good for the filthy heretic that had owned it, and she did her best to comfort its no doubt traumatized machine spirit.

Forscythe herself was found sobbing over the lifeless corpse of Sinric Allone, Inquisition Interrogator and Career Wastrel. Caesar was utterly crushed at the loss of his companion and was the first to discover it, his eyes cast downward at the marred and bloody floor in sadness despite the victory they had won. Although the two incessantly needled at each other and Caesar often got the worst of it due to Sinric's sharp wit, Caesar considered him to be like a brother.

Yarrow approached the remaining cultist who was trying to yank the fork out of her hand with little success. She cowered at the implacable expression on his scarred face.

"Please, you have to believe me! Siris was insane, he didn't give us a choice!"

"That's alright." Yarrow responded, his voice incredibly level and calm. "None of us were given a choice today."

He once more conjured his power. The noble coughed a small cloud of smoke, and then began to hack and scream, clawing at her chest cavity. Fire exploded from here eyes and mouth, and she fell to the ground as the internal inferno burned outward and melted her skin.

This grizzly work done, the combatants in the ballroom had all been killed. The surviving loyalists all looked to the party of Interrogators, unsure what to do. As they collected themselves they were astounded and a little saddened by Sinric's final fate. Yarrow always hated his guts, but even he begrudgingly admitted that he had against all odds managed to die a good death committing a selfless act and vowed to keep the woman he had died for safe in the aftermath of this crisis. Caesar was still inconsolable and didn't say much at all.



[GM'S NOTE
This lead to probably one of my favorite exchanges from the whole game when Yarrow tried to give Caesar the powersword Sinric had died wielding, possibly in a misguided attempt to cheer him up.

logs:

Yarrow picks up the power sword from sinric's side and hands it to Caesar. "You always did want a fancy sword."

Caesar Morroe stands up and makes his way over to Sinric's corpse, picking him up with a Fireman's Carry and starting towards the door.

Caesar Morroe:"I've got no use for it, that's a hero's weapon"

/logs
the song i was playing at the time was The Price of Failure by Perturbator and it made for a very emotional moment]


As Bram began to pile up the corpses and heretically engraved tables to form a mighty pyre for the heresy that had gone on, the sounds of conflict grew closer and a small squadron of Naval armsmen stormed in, presumably having fought their way through the routing Tarnell house soldiers to get there. There was a momentary tense standoff but a combination of the party finally flashing their Inquisitorial rosettes, the nobles all vouching they had saved the day and Hale himself managing to give an order for them to stand down convinced the soldiers that the party had indeed saved Hale's life.

Our "Ballroom Blitz" Roll20 sheet after the killing was done and the wanton doodling began


What followed was a far more typical investigation, the Sector Commander's forces assuming rudimentary control of the Draxis Spire and assisting the party in cleaning up any dangling threads, including thoroughly purging any suspected of involvement within the local nobility, scouring all of the Tarnell brothers possessions for additional heretical artifacts and purging all records of what they had done.

After roughly a day of this, they received a rather unusual message from the Commander's personnel manning the front gate of the palace. There was an unusual looking man demanding to see the Inquisition Interrogators stationed there, and he knew all their names. When the party gathered to see the man as the guards brought him up they received quite a surprise.

Approaching them was a bald man with bland features wearing an absolutely ragged uniform of one of the palace servants, stained brown with old blood. His right arm ended in a stump covered in bandages, he was deathly pale and limping along assisted by a woman in a black cloak and another in a neatly pressed naval uniform, a noisy medical servitor trailing behind them and hooked up to the man with IV drips. Unmistakably this was their boss and Inquisitor, Caspiel Rex of the Ordo Hereticus.

In spite of his apparently horrific injuries he seemed in remarkably good spirits, congratulating the party and saying that based on what he was able to glean from the filthy Underhive chop-hospital where he had been recuperating they had performed admirably. The group was shocked, to say the least. This mission was extremely unorthodox from the get-go and seeing that their boss was indeed here the whole time begged many questions. Rex promised to tell them everything as soon as they had a secure private room to do so, and they relocated.

Starting from the beginning, Rex told his Acolytes that he had taken a personal vested interest in the plot of the Tarnell brothers when one of his countless informants and spies let him on to the fact that they had come into possession of a peculiar artifact and had raised a couple red flags of deviant behavior. Obviously this was an issue in and of itself worthy of attention, but the manner in which they had come into possession of the artifact, seemingly out of nowhere and with no warning signs of deviant interest struck Rex as quite odd.

Rex had been working as an Inquisitor in the Gothic Sector for many decades now, and despite the utterly clandestine way he tended to operate he always had a sort of unusual feeling, like there was always something working in opposition to him in the shadows. Something moving between the grinding gears of Imperial society and delivering small parcels of forbidden knowledge in precisely the place where they would cause the most damage, and yet done with such utter detachment and carefully calculated randomness that anyone suggesting a planned effort would be laughed at for lack of proof. Based on this and some other factors he declined to mention he became convinced said actors were indeed real and had influenced the Tarnell family, likely without them even knowing they had been manipulated.

As it turned out he was right, and working undercover as part of the Tarnell house servant staff gave him a valuable clue. However he underestimated Siris' control of the artifact, and using it Siris was able to divine the traitor in the midst of his staff. Dimitrius carried out the sentence with his utter fearsome ruthlessness and strength, beating Rex to a pulp and throwing him down an elevator shaft. (the very same incident Bram was told about by the servant he bribed) However this display of brutality ended up being incredibly short-sighted and likely saved Rex's life. He managed to survive the fall, barely and through sheer force of will, and his Acolytes he had waiting on standby managed to get him to a no-questions-asked hospital in the Draxis Underhive. During his bouts of consciousness as the chop-docs worked fervently to keep him alive he worked through his Acolytes, pulling strings like a spider in the centre of its web and arranging for his group of Interrogators to attend this party in secret and put an end to the heresy there.

Somewhat sheepishly the party admitted to giving the artifact to Aleri, but Rex did not seem particularly bothered by this. Better she have it stored in her collection than the Tarnell brothers have it for their nefarious plans. He also mentioned that the Governor dying when he was likely not guilty of heresy was regrettable, but that saving Sector Commander Hale was a massive boon and rooting out more or less the entire nobility cult here rather than just apprehending the leaders was likewise a good outcome.

He then, predictably, told the party not to get too comfortable because he had another assignment for them. He had his own critical leads he needed to follow up, but they would be sent to the planet he was relatively certain the artifact the Tarnell brothers had been using for their divinations came from, a system on the rimward edge of the Gothic Sector called Vindet. This world was distant, and yet vital for its rich stellar mineral deposits and promethium reserves beneath its equatorial regions jungles. This time he had very little idea what they might find and no certainty of what exactly it was that they were looking for, all he knew for sure was that the artifact Aleri left with came from there and this meant that Rex's shadowy adversaries had to have operated there at some point. He told them he would arrange for their transit and once there they could meet a contact of his, a high ranking adept-scribe in the local Adminstratum branch that had reported some oddities he had found.

Finally, Rex mentioned they would be undergoing some team composition changes. Sinric had died and Rex needed Demios for a special task he declined to elaborate on, which left them short. To fill these vacancies he would be assigning them his two current companions, the straight laced career Navy armsman and operator Gamma Flair and the rougish and mysterious Revalya Teyatimei, still swathed in her cloak.

As they concluded the debriefing and made some quick introductions Rex warned them all to exercise the utmost caution on this assignment. If this adversary had really orchestrated so much while exposing nearly nothing of themselves they likely were masters of spycraft and manipulation, quite like Rex himself. Because of this they should trust no one with certainty, and expect treachery  everywhere. The worst, he theorized, was almost certainly yet to come

End

[GM'S NOTE

This marked the end of Spirebound, the "one-shot" that actually took three sessions to run and the group (me included) ended up enjoying so much that we all collectively agreed to keep the game going. Sinric had died (on purpose at the discretion of his player) and Demios had been reassigned, which allowed their players to make new characters that made up the rest of the main cast for the second act. They will both get proper introductions at the start of the next arc.

I hope you enjoyed the read, assuming you made it through this whole thing! I have a couple other projects on the go (a rules like 40k RPG system and a podcast) that will take up a bit more of my time but I am basically locked in to seeing this tale to its end. If you have any comments or criticisms on the way I write I would love to hear about it.

Believe me when I say that the next arc gets crazier, and is quite a bit longer!]

Special Thanks to Alcyone's player who made our custom charart (and doodled all the dolphins in the ballroom) check them out on tumblr HERE

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