Wew. Finally got back into running a Dark Heresy oneshot after getting some inspiration from stuff Duuvian sent me.
I gave my players two elite Sororitas characters serving under an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor. Sister Blackgate and Sister Myxodema (I am told Myxodema was the name of a rare disease my player was struggling to memorise for a medical exam) were equipped with incendiary grenades, bolters with incendiary rounds and underslung single-shot flamers to keep in the theme of BURNING. Supporting them were two stormtroopers equipped with melta-guns and two stormtroopers with shock mauls and storm shields, as well as a rhino transport vehicle.
They were stationed on a world called Erebuni, a world dominated by a single hive city - with the remaining portions of the planet consisting of red, dusty and toxic wastes or verdant feudal kingdoms with primitive levels of technology (flintlocks being the best weapons they have) but produce a lot of raw materials and foodstuffs for the hive. Their boss, the Ordo Hereticus inquisitor, is busy dealing with intrigues within the Hive personally (the world is held in various degrees by the Admiralty, the Administratum, the Ecclesiarchy, cartels, the Mechanicus and the noble houses), and the Inquisitor is certain that there is another Inquisitor on the planet who is undermining the planet's defences on purpose for reasons yet unknown. Yet it has come to his attention that someone from the feudal kingdoms is claiming to be a miracle healer, with his power coming from the Emperor himself.
Because he's busy, he sends the sisters to go deal with the healer. The inquisitor suspects the healer is either a heretic (falsely claiming the Emperor's power) or a witch (using unsanctioned psyker biomancy to heal others), so either way they must investigate and kill/capture the target. He sends the sisters to meet with a local Sheriff from the hamlet where the miracle healer is said to dwell. The sheriff salutes them and gets anxiously interrogated, revealing the healer is called Galen and practises his healing arts in a local copse nearby. He's a hermit who's probably not from the hive. The sheriff insists that in the hamlet of Goodsprings they're Emperor-fearing folk and there're no heretics to be found here, and Galen's no heretic either. They say some prayers for the sheriff's soul and then promptly execute him for harbouring a heretic.
They go one step further and vox in an artillery barrage on the copse wood, whilst using their Rhino and Titan support to isolate the hamlet and begin purging it too. When they discover a group of survivors escaped into two nearby towns, after verifying there wouldn't be any political consequences serious enough to bother their boss, they call in an orbital lance strike on the two nearby towns. However they get into an argument with Captain Tacitus who tells them plainly that he's not going to waste macrocannon shells glassing empty farmlands and if they want to catch any stragglers they better do their job and catch them themselves. So they mobilise the PDF with stormtrooper oversight and whilst the PDF are disappointing, they do catch Galen and execute him. Autopsies on bodies recovered from the copse also confirm they were perfectly healthy and had been healed with probable biomancy.
We ended up finishing one hour early because of their decisive action. I was looking forward to running a fight between hordes of poorly-armed but highly motivated militia vs a vastly outnumbered but elite fighting force, but they acted too decisively with such overwhelming force. I had honestly not expected them to take the "cauterising approach" as when I let them make their own characters they tend to make do-gooders who protect everyone - in this case there was so much collateral damage the only survivors were four children they kidnapped to be inducted into the schola system. It led to one of the coldest and most 40k moments where one of the kids' fathers aimed a flintlock pistol at one of the sisters and fired.
It was heartwarming IRL when we all watched the dice fall and hoped this NPC father would be able to do -something-, some act of defiance in the face of the unfairness of the world. He rolled to hit; he got a resounding three degrees of success. He rolled for damage... There was a very small chance he might be able to do something, to draw blood, to not go out without a fight. He failed to do any damage at all. The shot was stopped cleanly by their power armour. Sister Myxodema assusred him his child would be safe with them before one of the stormtroopers broke his leg with a swipe of his maul. In the end, the hamlet was crushed underfoot by warhound titans or swept away by megabolter fire.
Now I thought it would be hilarious if they did all that and it turned out Galen was just some chemist giving everyone aspirin or some swindler selling snake oil for clout and all those dead innocents were for nothing, but I had written down in my notes Galen was a psyker with a martyr complex who took people's illnesses and put them into his own body and I don't quantum ogre players (my players have complained before about another GM who did this - everyone they spared turned out to be hideously evil, everyone they killed turned out to be a misunderstood hero and it got old quickly). The players here used in-game information and in-character priorities to weigh up the costs and they wiped out two towns and a hamlet with the appropriate level of "emotional weight," it felt like a proper Ordo Hereticus purging and not a murderhobo escapade.
I'm trying to figure out now what'd be the most satisfying continuation of "the purging of Goodsprings" that doesn't cheapen the moral cost of what they did. E.g. I'm not bringing Galen back, if they think one dead psyker demagogue is worth the innocent lives of three towns, the psyker's staying dead. But I could for example have a preacher claiming to be Galen back from the dead, and I think that would be an interesting and natural continuation. Or I could just have it be an ever-present thing the feudal Kingdoms are aware of - falling into fear, superstition and witchhunts to escape the Inquisition's wrath whilst the Inquisitorial retinue focuses on the xenos threats & the rival inquisitor weakening the planet from within. I kinda prefer the latter since it'll be nice from a tactical point of view to pit the players against a well-organised enemy who is resistant to this kind of swift action but any ideas?