I've been running Dark Heresy for about 4 or 5 months now. I run every other week (when I can because of work or travel and the holidays), alternating with another player who runs a Black Crusade game. I have 5 players total, of which I can usually get 3 or 4 of them per session. A Ministorum Priest who is the front man of the group, who uses the Ministorum to gain personal power while seeming pious and dedicated to Emperor: Govelius Pwnus. We use his house for gaming so he's been there for it all. A Feral World Assassin of few words and much death, who worships the Emperor in his form of the Raptor of his homeworld: Raptorman. An Arbite from a noble family who believes in hard justice: Appelius Gracchus. An Imperial Guardsmen who reminiscences about his previous deployments and who (literally) reads from the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer during game: Raltus Metalus. And a Tech Priest who is a robot, who hasn't been there for as many sessions as others: Diode. We've run about 4 sessions now.
Part I
They were pulled together by an Inquisitor to form another cell in his network, and sent to a planet where there'd been rumors of a mutant uprising. As their first mission together, they're supposed to investigate and purge the mutant where they find it. The world is covered in perpetual, global hurricane conditions, with large parts of the continents covered in storm surges that come hundreds of kilometers inland. The largest concentration of population, more than a billion, is in one Hive. It's old, rusty, leaky and in bad shape. There's streams of water constantly falling down down from the higher levels.
They arrive to find there's already a massive riot underway in the Underhive. They question some people and find out it's a food riot. The primary export of the planet is fish, gathered from the stormy seas by giant fishing ships the size of small islands. A lot of people are puzzled as there's been no word of food shortages and there's certainly no shortage of food in the lower and upper hives. They try to get access to the Underhive but are turned away by police forces who have cordoned off the access lifts. They march right down to the headquarters of the Planetary Defense Forces, and corner a Captain.
They flash their Inquisitorial Warrants (basically gene-coded electoos that were sown into them while they were in transit to the planet. It's like an Inquisitorial Rosette, but not quite. It lets people know who they work for without giving them world-obliterating powers of a real Inquisitor), and demand access to the Underhive in the name of the Inquisition. They also demand access to the PDF's armory to outfit themselves.
With their papers secured they then go start tracking down officials, trying to sort out why shipments of food to the Underhive inexplicably stopped. They stop into a local watering hole, "The Shining Emperor", which is not shining, to talk to some locals. The reactions to the situation they've heard range from "The Underhivers are always pissed about something" to "Lord Vaxanide is not an unduly cruel man" to "Those greedy nobles are always selling others short to make a few Thrones." They go talk to the Head Foreman at the loading docks and he confirms, indeed, his orders were to divert food for the Underhive into the resources meant to be shipped offworld for trade. He points them the Hall of Trade and Commerce in the Upper Hive, where the orders originated from. He seems non-plussed, as the amount given to the Underhive and the Hive in general is trivial compared to the bulk that is already exported off world. The Lower Hive and the Upper Hive are still certainly getting their share.
The PCs try to get access to the lift that goes to the Upper Hive but are denied because they lack the credentials to go into the high-class, good-living noble enclave. They flash their warrants again but the soldiers station at the lift, terrified but still remaining loyal to their chain of command of the noble houses, ask them to wait while their superior comes to handle it. The PCs take their names down and promise them they'll remember their refusal to obey their commands when it comes time to sort out of the guilty, and head to the Underhive through the unfamiliar city.
Along the way they detour through a small, water logged alley in the Lower Hive and a group of cut purses emerges from the shadows. "Your money or your life" says one, and the PCs tell them to go to hell. It's a very close range fight, 30m at most. The Munitorium Priest hurls a fire bomb that engulfs one of the cut purses and kills him outright. The cut purses retaliate but their shots go wild. Another cut purses is killed by the combined fire of the Arbite's and the Assassin's autoguns, and another is wounded in the spray. The cut purses immediately lose their nerve and turn to flee. The unwounded one's head is exploded by the Munitorium Priest as he flees down the alley way. The remaining wounded cut purses begins to limp away, and the Noble Arbite deigns to let him live as a lesson and a gift from the Emperor. The Feral World Assassin, however, is not so inclined, runs up and explodes the man's head.
Part II
As they descend the lifts into the underhive they see the bottom of the lift is surrounded by a massive mob of thousands of angry underhivers. A cordon has been formed to protect the lift by several squads of Hive Enforcers in riot gear behind barricades. Several dead bodies already ring the cordon and they can see Enforcers battling to hold the front lines against the enraged crowds. The PCs zero in on the commander and order him to blanket the crowd with riot gas grenades. The party skirts the edge of the crowd and eventually pass its ranks.
In the distance they see a giant, ancient nuclear reactor that sits at the heart of the Underhive, surrounded by homes. They make their way toward it, thinking it to be the source of the mutants, while the deserted Underhive streets echo with shouts and gunfire. They begin searching the streets and houses around the reactor, looking in abandoned buildings for any signs of mutantry. They find some mild indicators among some corpses they run across, your garden variety Imperial world disfigurements, but nothing egregious. At this point a squad of heavily armed gangers comes marching down the street towards them. The leader, dressed in red-painted, spiked flak armor demands tribute for passing through the Warlord's territory. At this time there are two players (with a third about to arrive shortly.) Before anyone can do anything, the Feral World Assassin marches up to the Gang Leader, bold as brass, and draws his gun to blow the man's head off in a surprise attack. He aims at the ganger's face, pulls the trigger and....click. His weapon jams.
"SHOOT THOSE BASTARDS!" shouts the gang leader. Outnumbered, the PCs decide to flee. The Priest hurls a firebomb at the back of the crowd, engulfing several gangers, then turns and begins to run along with the Assassin. They duck into an alley as the gangers open up, several shots missing them.
They flee at random across several streets and alleyways, with the gangers on their heels. They trade wild shots with each other down water-logged alleyways in a running gun battle. After a few minutes, the Priest can no longer keep up the pace and they stop in cover behind some junk cars and mounds of filth and rubble in a street. The Tech Priest joins them at this point. The gangers begin arriving, with the leader first, in ones and twos, taking up positions behind cover at the other end of the street. The Assassin peels off from the group and moves further back down the street, looking for a vantage point. The Tech Priest and Ministorum Priest begin opening up with autorifles from cover and fell a ganger as he runs into the street from an adjoining alley. The leader moves forward and fires at the Ministorum Priest, hitting him in the arm.
By now the Assassin has found a good vantage point a few hundred meters away and settles down to clear the jam in his gun. The Tech Priest fires his autogun, and it jams on him. The Ministorum Priest, groaning at their luck, opens up again on the Gang Leader and rakes him with fire, punching several rounds through his chest and killing him. The last of the gangers arrive to join the fight. A pair of them move up in cover of the right side of the street, just 30m from the Tech Priest, while the rest continue firing on the two, their shots missing or beating deflected by cover.
The Assassin clears his jam and takes a bead on one of the gangers in cover with his autogun, taking a whole turn to make sure it's a hit. The Tech Priest throws down his Autorifle and takes out his Las Carbine, and returns fires on the gangers, hitting nothing. The Ministorum Priest sinks deeper into cover to reload his autorifle, cursing his injuries.
The pair of gangers in cover on the right of the street start shooting again with their autopistols, rounds chewing up cover all around the Tech Priest. The Ministorum Priest shouts at him to throw a fire bomb (which as you've probably noticed, they really stocked up on) at them, which he does, killing one and immolating another. The Assassin fires his shot and rolls a crit, exploding a ganger's head at the back of the street. The surviving gangers' resolve crumbles, and the one healthy one the furthest from the fight takes off, while the PCs killing the remaining, burning one.
As the fight ends an old women emerges into the street, grabbing one of the corpses by the hand and dragging it off towards a door way. The PCs approach her and she shouts at them at them to stay back, that "there's plenty to go around." The PCs ask her about the mutants and she tells them they've been raiding the Underhive, stealing what they can, murdering, carrying people off. The raids started right around the time the last of the real food dried up in the Underhive. She says this unironically. She says that most of the mutants seem to come out of the massive garbage wastes on the edge of the Underhive, known as the Heap.
The PCs, with a rough idea of where they're going, set off again into the streets of the Underhive. They do their best to stay in cover and keep to smaller streets. Along the way they pass a loud gun battle between two sides unknown, and choose to press on rather than investigating. Further along they catch sight of a lone Hive Enforcer, fending off three men dressed in purple shirts and pants and plastek face masks, wielding pistols and mono-edged cleavers.
They get the drop on the group of assaulting gangers, and to be honest the rest of the details of the fight escape me. It was quick and brutal. The PCs managed to rescue the Enforcer (who as I recall got saved from close combat right at the last second), whose name was Altus Sevrus. He was part of a squad of Enforcers that tried to breach beyond the riots at the access lifts (of which there are several into the Underhive) and were cut off and driven deeper into the Underhive. His squad is all but gone. The PCs show him their warrants and tell him to join them. While true to the Emperor and Vaxanhive, it turns out to be a fateful decision for Enforcer Sevrus.
Part III
They arrive at the edge of the Heap (after a slight detour trying to find a healer. They found one, but the rules of DH meant he could do next to nothing for the worst injuries the Ministorum Priest had.) The Heap stretches for kilometers along the edge of the Underhive, mounded against the foundations of the Hive itself. A rough wall of rotting flakboard covers the whole thing. The PCs arrive at one gate into it, and find it guarded by a group of 10 people. It's a motley assortment of gangers (a few members of gangs the PCs have already run into), a Hive Enforcer and a regular Police Officer known as a Gendarme, a civilian and a member of the Redemptionist Cult, armed with a flamer. They tell the PCs they've been holding the wall of the Heap for several days against incursions of mutant raiders, and the corpses out front of the barricades confirm that. The PCs get their first look at the mutants and see they are grossly disfigured, their mutations ranging from twisted flesh and distorted features to multiple limbs and organs and worse, wearing rags and bone charms.
A garbled transmission comes across the vox transmitter they were given, from a NPC team member in orbit over the planet. (Their Inquisitor gave them their orders remotely, as he has other things to do.) The Tech Priest starts fiddling with the set trying to get better reception or use a better better channel to receive on. He clears the link and is told by their cohort that he's been monitoring transmissions of the PDF forces and they're mobilizing to move into the Underhive to pacify the riot by force.
Right as this information comes to them, they hear a roar from inside the Heap and a group of mutant raiders charge out of the trash mountains and hills. While some are only armed with crude weapons torn from rusted metal objects, others seem to be sporting lasguns. Brand new lasguns.
The mutant raiders spread out across the heap working their way up to cover and two very large mutants, very different from each other approached. One was a muscled freak, standing 9 feet tall, wearing armor on his chest made from random metal plates, and a jagged spar of metal on a haft like a two-handed axe. The other was more lithe but had 4 legs that resembled a spider's legs in shape but with a human character, and an extra arm wielding a lasgun. All in all it was about 10 mutants versus 11 PCs and NPCs. This is the fight that really kind drove home the point to me about range and combat sizes. There was little cover between the Imperials and mutants, so the mutants pressed in as close as they could, collecting for a mass charge. They were cut down steadily as they as they ineffectually returned fire, their ballistic skills poor and often impaired by mutation. One of the NPC defenders, another ganger in purple, lost his patience and ran out of cover to engage in close combat. Capitalizing on his decision, a PC followed behind him, and placed firebombs on him to detonate when the mutants met his charge.
The ganger was cut down before he could reach the mutants lines but the blast still caught two, killing one and setting the other ablaze. The Arbite retreated back to cover as the two largest mutants came into the fray. The spiderwalker mutant, far faster than anything else, ate up the distance, while the larger muscle bound one trundled along. Other raiders left cover to join the larger one in his charge on the right of the fight, while the spider walker raced out alone on the left, taking some glancing hits as it charged through focused fire. A group of raiders still in cover in the center continued to pour fire on the defenders, wounding several NPCs but not the PCs.
The Redemptionist Zealot with the flamer stepped out to meet the charge of the Juggernaut and the pair of raiders. He swept his flamer over them, catching the Juggernaut and one raider, while another danced out of the cone of fire. The PCs and defenders on the right focused fire on the Juggernaut, bringing him down. The defenders on the left focused on the spiderwalker, who in one turn was directly in front of the barricades. A female ganger in garish, bright colors and fake gold, was in line to be hit by its next attack. She fired on it with her pistol and wounded it. The Tech Priest, inside a building that was part of the wall of the Heap wastes, opened fire on the spiderwalker from a window, killing it as it finally dropped from all the wounds it'd taken.
A mutant, one who had escaped the flamer closed with the Redemptionist Zealot and rammed a rusted knife into his stomach, mortally wounding him. The defenders swiveled their guns and cut him down.
The mutants, completely broken now, began to flee the fight and the PCs fired on them as they ran. One turned as it fled and shouted across the wastes "The Glowing King will be the end of you!" It cost him his life.
The PCs could now hear the rumble of heavy weapons and explosions from within the Underhive, signs that the PDF had started to move in. They patched into the comms channels on the vox transmitter and got in contact with the same PDF Captain that had gotten them access to the Underhive. They explained what was going on, and the PDF Captain agreed to divert forces to meet the mutant threat.
Next they began pressing the defenders into service. They presented their warrants. The Ministorum Priest, intoning proverbs and praises to the Emperor no one in the party or the NPCs can understand because they don't speak High Gothic, called on each defender personally to help them eradicate the mutant threat. The two surviving PDF Enforcers, Enforcer Sevrus and Enforcer Dantalus both eagerly agreed to help. They turn to one of the gangers, one of the well armed Warlords, and demand his service to the Emperor, the Master of Mankind. The ganger takes off his helmet, a nasty jester's smile of a wound exposing the teeth on the left side of his face. "I only got one boss and it ain't the Emperor!" he snarls. Without a word, the Arbite raises his weapon to execute him for heresy and the ganger, knowing what's coming, raises his autogun to ventilate the Arbite at close range.
Before either can do anything, the Ministorum Priest pumps the ganger full of lead with his autogun, sinking several rounds into his chest before exploding his skull.
They move to the next ganger, one with black cloth wrapped around his clothes and arms, and several prominent throwing knives. He nods when they ask him if he'll join, glancing askance at the corpse of the dead Warlord. The female ganger in the outrageous colors, despite what she's just seen, still refuses to join them but manages to do so without blaspheming and the party decides they won't make an issue of it. Another ganger, who looks more like a beggar than a violent gang member, comes with. The Underhive civilian, with a simple stub revolver, also agrees to go if only out of fear of the party. The Gendarme begs off, saying he'll go out and contact the PDF forces to guide them to their location. The PCs tell him he'd better, or they'll make sure they come and find him to repay his cowardice. The Redemptionist Cult member, nursing a nasty stomach wound, also begs off. I kind of regret that, he should have gone on. But he does pass them his flamer.
As they take stock of their party, the Ministorum Priest intones "You're all the Emperor's scum now."
The PCs rest (as they've been going for many hours now in game without a break) for a while until the PDF troopers show up, led by the PDF Captain they'd spoken with. The squad medic does what he can for everyone, which isn't a lot after the dispersal of the NPCs. We also remembered people can spend FATE points to regain any wounds, and that helped a lot. The PDF Captain tells them other units have found multiple cave entrances near the back of the Heap, right into the bedrock of the planet, and that multiple squads of PDF soldiers are moving in. The Imperial Guardsmen demands the PDF squad with them turn over the squad Heavy Stubber over to him. The PCs also loot, extensively, all the corpses they can for solid ammo to feed their Autoguns. Despite the wealth of las weaponry, they prefer the # of hits you get with full auto.
Part IV
The group of now 20 people head deeper into the Heap and before long discover a tunnel into the bedrock of the planet itself. The signs of rock boring drills and meltacutters shows its clearly the work of the Mechanicum. Down the tunnels they pass some dilapidated hovels and shanties, now abandoned, some with evidence of violence in them. Further along the tunnels they find strange shapes painted on the walls, dozens and dozens of eyes, all different in shape and style, grouped together in clusters.
They follow the tunnel until it reaches a far larger natural one. It's pitch black, so the PDF have given them all luminators to attach to their weapons. They can hear the sound of water rushing, echoing off the cavern walls around them and see a large underground stream, flowing into a channel cut into the rock along the length of the tunnel. Stalactites and stalagmites cover the cavern from the eons of moisture dripping off the rock.
The group arbitrarily picks a direction and begins moving, playing their lights around looking for mutants. It's not long before they begin to hear the echoes of gunfire and shouts bouncing off the cave walls, but they can't get a fix on its direction. Then they begin to discern another sound, a name echoing in the darkness. Enu. Enu. Enu. It gets louder and louder until it sounds like it's everywhere. Then las fire begins to cut through the darkness ahead of them.
The PCs and the defenders of the Heap are on one side of the shallow river while the PDF troops and their captain are on the other. Everyone is hunkered down behind stalagmites for cover. Arrayed against them are 20 mutants led by a large, almost gorilla looking mutant, his overgrown arms and fleshy torso hunching him over. His tank-like body is covered in armor plates and he carries a giant hammer made from scrap parts.
The mutants open up.
Almost immediately the civilian NPC, who the Assassin had taken a creepy shine to, gets hit with las fire twice in the chest and goes critical. But because the Assassin had bizarrely injected him with stimm (I suppose to bulk up his courage? The Assassin has a weird thing with stimm shots, I think he wants to get addicted or get people addicted or something), manages to continue fighting.
The Imperial Guardsmen takes several hits but manages to stay upright and out of critical damage.
On the PC's turn, the Ministorum Priest fires on the Tank mutant, dealing some wounds that would have killed a lesser creature. Then the Imperial Guardsman opens up with his Heavy Stubber gets a ton of hits and rolls the Emperor's Wrath successfully and just absolutely shreds the Tank mutant, doing over 20 wounds worth of damage due to the penetration on each hit. The Tank mutant, with holes blasted cleanly through his body, stumbles on for more than a meter before finally crashing to the ground.
The pair of Enforcers advance forward with their shotguns, preparing to flank a mutant in cover behind a stalagmite. The other NPCs advanced a little closer as well. The Assassin tries to urge the civilian into a charge with him but fails his leadership roll, and the grievously wounded Underhiver remains behind. The Assassin charges out of cover towards the mutants wielding a looted mono-cleaver in one hand and a pistol in the other. (He mentioned possibly rolling up a psyker instead. My guess would be because he runs our Black Crusade campaign, he's gotten all sorts of evil ideas.)
I abstracted way the other combat across the river for the sake of my sanity. The mutants and PDF traded shots, with things being fairly even between them until the end of the fight where both sides started taking heavy losses.
The mutants fire again, mostly focusing on the NPCs who are closest and the Assassin who is running toward them, without much success.
The two Enforcers flank the mutant. Enforcer Sevrus misses with his shotgun, unbelievably at that range, while the other Enforcer rolls really well and blasts him apart with multiple hits. The civilian fires a mostly hopeless shot and actually manages to hit, but his shot is lost to cover. The other gangers in the party fire from cover along with the PCs, killing a couple. The Imperial Guardsmen opens up again, raking the mutants with fire and killing another.
The Assassin charges into a mutant behind cover, one with a huge, unnaturally gaping mouth and two exposed eyes on top of his head, but misses.
The mutants attack again, and Enforcer Sevrus meets his end when a las round takes his face off. The other Enforcer ducks into cover after seeing that. The mutant in combat with the Assassin misses as he tries to stab him with the blade mounted on his lasgun.
The Imperials attack back, with damage slowly being spread around the mutants, who are getting thin on their side of the river. The civilian lands a hit, again, to my continued amazement, proving you can find true servants of the Emperor among even the most common and basest of citizens. The Assassin blasts into the legs of the mutant with his pistol in close combat, and slashes with his cleaver, and the mutant falls to the ground, crippled but alive. The Imperial Guardsman misses with the Heavy Stubber.
When the mutants open up again, the Enforcer is their closest target, and two shots end him. Others manage to seriously wound the ganger with all the knives. The grounded mutant lashes out at the Assassin, but he parries with his cleaver.
On the Imperials' turn, again against expectations, the civilian manages to hit with his pistol. The Heavy Stubber, so spectacular at the start of the fight, jams. The Ministorium Priest, seeing an opportunity, begins firing into the exposed mutants across the river, hastening their end. The charade on the ground continues as the Assassin manages to miss again despite the mutant being prone.
That was essentially the end of the fight. The Imperial Guardsmen, chanting the Litany of Unjamming, successfully unjamed his Heavy Stubber, the PCs started opening up on the exposed flank of the mutants across the river, tipping the scales there, the Assassin finally cleaved in the skull of the mutant he was wrestling with, and the remaining mutants broke and began to flee, their numbers decimated. They were killed as they fled. Of the 20 Imperials that went into that fight, only about 10 left alive. Why 10? At the end of the fight, as the medic was packing the wounds in the civilian's chest, the Assassin walks up. He said something grim I don't quite remember and then executed him, while the horrified PDF Medic looked on. I was told I oversold his injuries and perhaps I did. They believed they were putting him out of his misery. On the other hand, Raptorman can get fixated on an idea and just not let go of it, and opted to do the same thing knowing he wasn't dying when offered the chance. So I gave him 2 corruption points, because it was a cold blooded thing to do to someone who had, quite steadfastly, fought for him. Outright murder and betrayal are two very quick paths to Chaos.
The PDF Captain examined the lasguns used by the mutants and noted that the were already etched with the Hive regimental assignment numbers; a sign these PDF weapons had come from within the hive.
That's been my experience with DH in the couple of months I've been running it. I've tried to stay true to stuff as it actually happened, although I've skipped over a lot of the rules discussions and snark at the table. Combat reads way quicker than it was (which doesn't read that quicker either) and there's a lot of rounds spent missing shots in there not described. In their next adventure, the PCs face the Glowing King of the mutants, Enu, as the PDF closes in around his forces. It's now very clear to the party that there's something very wrong in the Hive besides mutants.
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Topic: Dark Heresy (And other Warhammer 40,000 RPGs) (Read 18767 times)