Drhoz
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Posts posted by Drhoz
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Errant said:
The Reclaimator! I must have it!
Tricky, now - the PCs blew it to bits, and the boobytrap blew it the rest of the way
But essentially it was a large cruiser with murder servitors, teleportarium, disrupters, lux nets, salvage claws and a few other things Ian thought sounded neat. -
Luther Engelsnot said:
Oh and I made a mistake. The explorers have a barrack on board their ship. It contains roughly 4000 soldiers and some tanks. I made at an equivalent of 1 Damaris Hghland Levy battalion. But today I noticed one battalion is only a fourth of 4000 man, which is the equivalent of one regiment. I misread it an thought one battalion is 4000 man. Should I correct it and give to explorer four instead of one battalion with the same stats as the Damaris Hightland Levy? Or is this already too much and it will be to easy?
Up to you, really - you can always keep it as one unit but up its effective strength. Handwave it however you like - the Levy have the home ground advantage, for one thing.
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Traveller61 said:
Thanks for those reports - sounds like a great game, and please tell us more
DW
will do - currently writing up the second half of last session - trading with dogfaces.
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Unfortunately they do have a teleportarium, which is one of the reasons I want to have void shields installed over the target. And the players have already suggested EMP, so I'm glad most of the important infrastructure is going to be underground. With a large population and the equivalent of a tenebrous maze, so all attempts at 'hit-and-runs' should meet with disaster. Not that that I'm going to tell them that, of course. Plus, watching them trying to teleport into enclosed spaces should be amusing.
I suspect they will end up besieging the planet. Of course, that will give time for the various Inquisitorial and AdMech factions with an interest in the situation to get involved, and it will all rapidly snowball.
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Neat - any more details about her famous achievements of the past?
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hmm. Getting Marines involved seems unlikely, unless the heretics are ones that the Space Marines you want to get involved have a personal interest - Space Wolves vs. Thousand Sons, for example. But the chances are remote that a Rogue Trader would even know about that back history, and the Marines and the Inquisition would very much like to know how they found out such secrets.
Other Imperial forces are much easier to involve - indeed, some Warrants state that the bearer may demand ships and troops from any governor he likes, as long as he pays for their upkeep and is acting towards endevours listed in said Warrant..
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The 'Behind Mykybe's Veil' Campaign has made a major right-hand turn, thanks to some spectacular cock-ups on my part, and the PCs are now intent on launching a full scale planetary assault on a planetful of Logicians. They have some advantages - the dynasty's founder was involved in the Meritech Wars, so they have some historical precedent, and they can call in the AdMech for assistance, something I suspect they would gleefully do anyway.
But apart from the planet having a native biosphere, and swarming with at least a dozen ships, they have no idea what to suspect.
The Logicians, of course, have been well dug in, and they're certainly have a well-protected station in geosynchronous orbit above their surface settlement ( I'll just borrow the stats for the one in Frozen Reaches for the latter) but what sort of defences, units, etc would the ground war forces have given their knowledge of orthodox and highly unorthodox tech? Void shields over the town, and a variety of Planetary Defense Lasers, seems likely.
The PCs are going to be made further unhappy when they discover the target is surrounded by miles of featureless flood plain with no better than knee-high cover.
Any and all suggestions welcome, as I suspect this brushfire war is going to come as a very rude shock to the players...
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Meph said:
One can Easily imagine juvenat treatments also including stuff like this. (From the film 'Brazil')
Hey, that's Jim Broadbent - funny, never realised that was him before. Of course, Brazil had a setting that wasn't too far off the mark for 40K either. Harry Tuttle, Heating Repair Heretek.
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Gorgeous work! Wish my own was even close to that standard
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Rogue Trader, Holder of the van Baroque Warrant, Master of the Rose Tattoo, Lord-Captain Leman van Baroque, third of the dynasty.
A dour and militarist man, still trying to rebuild the van Baroque fortunes after his grandfather nearly bankrupted his family in the war that earned them the title in the first place.
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Astropath Adrik of the Rogue Trader starship 'Rose Tattoo'. Native of a feral world prior to the manifestation of his psychic abilities, and supremely fortunate in that he was not only not killed by his neighbours, but strong-willed enough to survive processing, and the Soul-Binding ritual, that made him the Imperium's equivalent of an interstellar mobile phone.
Pictured here in Void Armour, assisting in a boarding action against another ship. Notice the caps over his eyes - he kindly had them installed after his empty eye-sockets kept disturbing the crew - it's not like he needed them - his abilities give him a 360-degree awareness of his surroundings anyway.
Waywatcher reacted to this -
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu, First Officer and Chief Explorator of the Rogue Trader starship 'Rose Tattoo'. Surprisingly personable for one of the Adeptus Mechanicus - no doubt he had the ancient text "How To Win Friends And Influence Meatbags' hardwired into his brain.
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niiiiice
Do mind if it gets used to give my players a reason to argue over the wording for most of a session? -
Crew
in Rogue Trader
I did some quick calculations on the the ship from our campaign - at a conservative estimate, the Rose Tattoo has over 3000 kilometres of corridor. And 15 million cubic meters of space they haven't found a use for yet.
One has to wonder how they get around - golf carts? SegWays?
At least my miniatures set-up for next session make sense now - a long abandoned compartment, dozens of decks deep, with a few cranes and transport vehicles slowly rusting centuries after they were forgotten about.
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Sure have been enjoying them
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Nicely done. It's always lovely to see the players get that "Ohhhhhhh crap!" look on their faces.
And yes, those wacky PC's will do a great job derailing your plots. Hey, they do it to me, too.
Cheers,
- V.
Thanks - next session they'll be dealing with the demon (or vice versa ), meeting Stryxis, butting heads with the Navy, and realising just how gargantuan a task they've set themselves in trying to conquer a star system armed with enough heretical tech to make the Arch-Magi of the Lathes blow a circuit. Oh, and one more wrinkle that will hopefully have the players panicking.
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been listening to them over the past few weeks - highly enjoyable
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Sounds like it went very well for you
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Alas, live in Perth Australia. Hope you find some players in more suitable timezones though
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ooooh *drools appropriately*
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all nice work - Inspiring, in fact
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Certainly been enjoying your podcasts
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One of the other GMs was running DH, and couldn't afford to buy Into the Storm for the Ork content. I volunteered to pay for it, murmured that I'd been planning to run something like RT, and the players and various bystanders jumped at the chance to participate.
Of course, I have ulterior motives... and one day, my purpose shall be revealed. MWAHAHAHAHA *cue thunder and lightning*
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Part Seven : The Rose Tattoo, currently laid up in orbit around Lucin's Breath, is roused to action by a frantic distress call from the scoopship Archangel, harvesting deuterium from a gas giant closer to the star - they're being taken apart by something much larger than themselves. Lord-Captain van Baroque is in no state to command, having over-imbibed on amasec and anecdote, but Tech-Priest Casu Marzu is happy to assume control. After all, in his opinion the ship rightfully belongs to the Priesthood of Mars anyway, and the Lord-Captain is just one of those inconvenient meatbags you have to work around sometimes.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Go to Red Alert! You! Change the light-bulb!
Lord-Captain Harlvesk of the Emperor's Vow can evidently hold his liquor better, and the two ships lead the rush to assist. After all, the Koronus Expanse may be relatively lawless, but there is a standing bounty on pirates, and the authorities don't much mind what you do to the pirates themselves afterwards. Tech-Priest Marzu advises Lord-Captain Harlvesk to stay in position with the Rose Tattoo. Arriving ahead of any support may be unwise. Considering what happened with the Rose Tattoo a few weeks earlier, somebody on the Vow's bridge finds this advice risible, before being politely cut off. Since the gas giant in question orbits a star busy turning itself into a planetary nebula ( one of the reasons it's so enriched in deuterium in the first place ) the radiation belts around it are unbelievably hellish, so it is not until they can see the Archangel and its attacker, crouched like a ghastly spider silhouetted against the cloud-tops, that they can even tell what they're up against.
GM : The main hull is standard Imperial, as far as you can tell. But the part of it that horrifies your Tech-Priest soul are the almost insectile limbs grafted onto the superstructure...
Marzu's player : *alarmed* Are some of those limbs claws?
GM : *nods happily*
Marzu's player : You ****er. You unbelievable ****, ****, **********, etc.
GM : You roll up a random ship, and gloat about how awesome and unbeatable it is, and you honestly believe I'm *not* going to use it against you? Hand over the data-sheet, I haven't familiarized myself completely with your design.
Marzu's player : That's why I didn't give it to you before, ********* >
The enemy ship is known to the Tech-Priests and the Imperial Navy as the Reclamator, and it has a long history of carving up other spacecraft all over the Calixis Sector and the Expanse, and harvesting the crews for conversion into servitors.
Marzu's player : Reclamator?!? That's what I was going to call it!! *froths*
It's believed to be a creation of the hereteks known as the Logicians, the same group behind the Meritech Corporation and cause of the war that earned van Baroque's grandfather his title. The Tech-Priests of the Lathe system have a reward for its destruction - freehold on one of an assortment of recently surveyed worlds. Casu Marzu is even more familiar it, since he was one of the few survivors of another attack by it, decades ago.
GM : There's a strange sort of strangled noise coming over Marzu's vox-channel, before a list previous known attacks starts scrolling up on all your holo-screens. It's a long list, even before you get to the section on *suspected* attacks.
Xanthis : I think I should have stayed back on the space station...
Tech-Priest Marzu : Excuse me whilst I unclog my digestive outlet vent.This prior experience may give him a tactical advantage however, since he has some idea of where its vulnerabilities may be. Certainly it's currently busy harvesting the Archangel, but it won't be short on power, since it's unfurled superconducting cables hundreds of kilometers long, and is tapping the gas giant's ferocious magnetic field.
Jak's player : *Aghast at the list of the Reclamator's various abilities*
Marzu's player : I know! I looked at this and wondered what kind of piece of **** are *we* flying around in?The subsequent battle is surprisingly one-sided, despite the Emperor's Vow proving incapable of hitting anything smaller than a nearby moon.
Jak : What are they *doing* over there? I picture a gang of morons flailing their arms and running into things."Hello, Mister Gumbyyyyy!"
GM : "Hello! My brain hurts!"
Jak : And they've just managed to suck the loading crew into the launch tube, instead of the shell. And there's Scruffy, pushing his broom and going "Hmm. Gonna have to clean that up."The Vow does manage to hit the Reclamator once in the exchange - and achieves nothing at all ( four ones! )
GM : They really are firing their own crew instead of shells.
Jak : *strikes Superman flight pose* Hgngn! For duh Emperor!
Marzu OOC : *leans out porthole* Fly closer! I want to hit it with my sword!Marzu flexing his cogitators and assuming control of the Reclamator's torpedoes and turning them against their own ship helps. Although there are certainly some fraught moments.
GM : Two of the smaller limbs on the Reclamator are turning to point at your ships... and FLASH. Every auspex on that side of the ship whites out. A fraction of a second later, half the airlocks have welded themselves shut with arc discharge, the machine spirits for every sensor on the hull are screaming at you... and your void shield generators just burned out.
Marzu consults with his opposite number on the Vow.Magos Lensiac : Greetings in the name of the Omnissiah, brother. I anticipate your enquiry - we, too, have just been struck by an electromagnetic pulse of approximately twelve hundred and eighty gigajoules... I am receiving reports from my Void Shield adepts... excuse me, Brother Marzu, I must continue this exchange of data later. A Situation has arisen.
That's because the Reclamator has followed up the EMP by teleporting hundreds of Murder Servitors into both ships. Jak is down in the laser battery, bossing the ratings around, when they become aware of this.GM : There's a pattering noise, very like hot tropical rain on a rooftop back on Myen-Fio, or hail falling into a lake.
Jak : You don't have to piss yourself yet, people.
GM : The noise is getting louder.Glancing back down the long corridor leading to the rest of the ship, you see the lights at the far end go out. And then the next closer do... and the next...
Jak : I switch on my suits low-vision camera
GM : Swarming down the corridor, and the walls, and the ceiling, is a mass of combat servitors, human arms and legs replaced with a profusion of long, multi-jointed limbs...
Jak : Close the door! Close the ****ing door!!!!Elsewhere, Primarus psyker Xanthis Raytheon is warming up his unnatural abilities as he waits for more of the same. Side effects include ghastly odors that permeate even void suits.
Xanthis : Whoops, farted in my spacesuit. Argh!
GM : The first wave of murder servitors comes around the corner in a wall of twitching, skull-faced metal.
Xanthis :
I don't think that was *just* a fart.However, he does fry the first few with a wall of psychoelectricity.
Xanthis' player: *rolls dice* I hit on everything there...
Jak's player : Hit *on*?
Marzu's player : Are you some kind of robosexual?GM : The electrical discharge leaps down the corridor, arcing off every bulkhead and rivet, until it reaches the first rank of servitors, filling the intersection with acting tendrils of lightning, setting flesh on fire and welding metal.
Adrik : They're doing The Dance of the Electric Cockroach
Jak OOC : *sings* THUNDERSTRUCK!!!
All : *pose as costumed servitors thrashing it out on guitar*Alas, the surviving cyborgs open fire.
GM : You and some of the rating manage to dive into cover, but some of you aren't so fast. They are hosed down with fire, but instead of the spray of blood and bodyparts you were expecting, they go 'What?' and start patting themselves down, where long needle-like darts are protruding from their armour. Roughly a second and a half later, they go into violent convulsions.
Adrik : Now they're doing The Dance of the Electric Cockroach too
The servitors are just as dangerous in hand-to-hand, what with the way all four wrists hinge back to reveal hollow steel spikes, but again, Xanthis' powers are sufficient to deal with the problem, and raise superstitious terror in the crewmen fighting alongside you.
GM : Your first strike severs the neck, and the second punches right through its chest and rips out its heart. You stand there, muscles flexed, its oil pump still clutched in your fist. Which now catches bursts into flame. HRARGHHH! *poses heroically* The crewmen, however, is staring at you with a horrified expression and looks like he can't decide whether to shoot you or the servitors. *shoots the servitor to no effect, cries* 'I should have shot him, he's got less armour!'
GM : After you've killed the last servitor, there's only you and one of the ratings left.
Xanthis : I kill him.
GM : ... why?
Xanthis : I don't want bad rumours about me to worry the crew.
GM : You don't want to disturb the crew.... so you kill them instead
Adrik and Malakai, however, teleport over to the Emperor's Vow with a squad of stormtroopers, to assist against the murder servitors storming their bridge. Eventually, the two ships not only manage to deal with the boarding actions, but they force the Reclamator to flee into the Warp, severely damaged. Marzu and the others want to borrow Harlvesk's Navigator, and pursue the enemy to where-ever they've fled. More comedic advantage is made of the Lord-Captain's absence.
GM : He's slept through the whole thing, apart from bellowing "What's all that noise out there? Keep it down, I'm trying to sleep!"
Jak as van Baroque : *snuggled up to pillow* 'I love you Ork-skin blankey'I do, however, ring his player. He orders the crew to merely follow them, map the location, and get the hell out and call in the Navy. Under no circumstances are they to engage, especially given what has happened to other ships that pursued the Reclamator. These orders are promptly ignored.
Tech-Priest Marzu : I'm sorry, Lord-Captain, but it would appear the attack has damaged the communications system. And the door to your cabin.
The system the Reclamator has fled to is indeed swarming with enemy ships, but none close enough to save their crippled compatriot before the Rose Tattoo finishes punching it full of holes. Indeed, Marzu and the others have time to teleport over in attempt to find and kill the enemy captain, but even though they find a mannequin stuffed with a plasma bomb instead, escape before it goes off.
The Rose Tattoo embarks for the nearest Battlefleet outpost - not only have they found a Logician nest, the planet is itself a valuable discovery. Lord-Captain van Baroque is not impressed, and is understandably inclined to throw the other PCs out the airlock. If they want a planet of their own so much, they can walk there.
The trip through the Warp is much smoother than anything they endured under their previous Navigator, which is nice. And everybody ( apart from the Lord-Captain, and the relatives of the troops sent to board the Reclamator ) is in high spirits. Jak and Adrik escort Xanthis back to his isolated quarters on one of the lower hab-decks before he can disturb any more crew.
GM : Xanthis & Adric - you two are suddenly overwhelmed by a vision - a dark void, but one that as your perception adjusts is broken by faint red stars, pulsing feebly, and strands of darker red that you can somehow urge into new patterns. Beyond your immediate surrounds are thousands of red and distant stars, very like the ones to hand. But your field of vision shifts, bringing into view two much brighter stars, trailing fire like comets. One is a flickering actinic blue-white, the other a lambent golden glow somehow more painful to look upon. They rush towards you, or you to them - it's difficult to judge. Then you're both back in the corridor.
Xanthis : ... the hell? Did you just -
GM: Something hits the bulkhead six inches from your ear, hard enough to deform the plasteel. Then again, and again, as rivets and metal scream in protest. And you're all overwhelmed with gut-wrenching nausea at the sensation of something *unnatural* far too close to hand.Jak, wisely, retreats at speed, while Adrik calls up Marzu to let him know that a demon has somehow got aboard. The four cautiously investigate, and find the cabin on the far side of that wall a place of charnel horror - the three families that bunked there methodically immobilised, and vivisected, blood and organs laid out in eye-twisting runes on every surface. There's a dead mutant too - extremely dead, almost liquescent - and a open wall hatch they suspect leads to one of the abandoned sections of the Rose Tattoo's structure.
GM : Are you going to inform the Captain?
Adrik : That the hull mutants are in league with demons? Nah, he has enough problems.
GM : The same hull mutants that I've been saying for months now have been in surprisingly low number?
Adrik : .... ****
.The four crawl through the miles of ducting in pursuit - no point panicking the crew just yet - to locate which of the Black Holds it may be hiding in. That the Rose Tattoo even has such areas is not that surprising - even a conservative calculation suggests it has over 3000 kilometres of corridor - but eventually they emerge in a long abandoned compartment some fifty stories high, criss-crossed with rusting walkways, balconies, and slack cables strung like lianas across the dank and noxious darkness.
And they're not alone. Hanging in mid-air, some 30 feet up, is the figure of a ten-year-old girl, eyes burning with sick yellow-green flame. She looks down at them, tilting her head to one side with a ghastly grin, and purrs "Playyyy?"
( After-game notes : I made a few fatal errors this session, mostly not using to Reclamator to best advantage. Also, Marzu's player of course knew all the Reclamator's weaknesses, and knew the rules far better than me. Plus, it now looks like they want to get involved in a full-scale planetary assault, so I have a lot of work as a GM ahead of me to try and flesh out what was supposed to be a one-off encounter...)
But essentially it was a large cruiser with murder servitors, teleportarium, disrupters, lux nets, salvage claws and a few other things Ian thought sounded neat.
Do mind if it gets used to give my players a reason to argue over the wording for most of a session?
Behind Mykybe's Veil - Campaign Journal
in Rogue Trader Gamemasters
Posted
No Jak this week, and the Rogue Trader's player has had to bow out indefinitely, so the session opens with a slight retcon of events between the destruction of the Reclamator, and the PCs going demonhunting.
Still crowing over their success, Marzu, Adrik, Jak & Xanthis are slightly surprised when Malakai and a troop of heavily armed armsmen turn up, with orders from the Lord-Captain to escort them to the nearest airlock. The Lord-Captain is there, and he's not happy. Indeed, since his spy network among the crew has already turned up rumours that Marzu locked him in his cabin because he was drunk, he's ****ing furious. Marzu pointing out that he was, in fact, drunk, does not do the Lord-Captain's blood pressure any good.
GM : You know, for a tech-priest you're supposedly quite personable - perhaps you had the ancient text "How to Win Friends & Influence Meatbags" hard-wired into your brain. And then, and then, you go and say something like that.
Lord-Captain van Baroque : Mr Raytheon, you served in the Imperial Guard, did you not? And you were raised on a voidship? Could you please remind Brother Marzu as to the penalty for disobeying the orders of a superior officer?
Xanthis : Ah, all crew and officers who participate in mutiny or disobey the orders of their commanding officers shall be executed by exposure to the Void?
Tech-Priest Marzu : Execution? I thought you were going to send us out to swab the hull or something.
The Lord-Captain's face goes an alarming shade of purple, and a few extra veins throb on his forehead. Then he gets a confused expression, his eyes roll up, and he collapses.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Um... did you have anything to do with that?
Xanthis : Nope?
Tech-Priest Marzu : I think I'd better apply some medical knowledge then.
GM : That would probably be a good idea.
The captain, it turns out, has had a massive cerebral aneurysm.
GM : Considering he was talking to one of your characters, Ian, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.
He is rushed to the medical unit, and into sus-an, since the Rose Tattoo lacks the facilities to repair such extensive damage.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Maybe I can make a servitor out of him.
GM : ... You want to make a servitor. Out of the Lord-Captain.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Oh, don't worry, it's be a neat one, with two Gatling cannons for arms!
Xanthis : Can you do anything to help him manage his emotions?
GM : How about a volitor circuit so his head explodes if he gets angry with you?
Leaving the Lord-Captain to the medic's tender mercies, and the ship's seneschal pouring over the minutiae of the Warrant of Trade for what options the crew has under these circumstances, we jump forward to the discovery of the demon on board, and confronting it in one of the Black Holds.
GM : I hope you won't hold it against Jak that he fled at the first sight of the demon?
Malakai : No, entirely human reaction. Demon? Hell yes, run like ****.
Adrik : But that won't stop us given him grief about it latter
Malakai : That's an entirely human reaction too
Adrik : 'Ha-ha, you ran away from a little girl'
To the horror of the explorers, the possessed girl shrugs off almost everything they throw at her, merely giggling happily at the hail of laser beams, heavy calibre ammo, plasma fire, and rocket-propelled grenades they unload at her. Indeed, Marzu, Malakai, and Adrik are soon scrambling for cover and firing positions, as the demon throws multi-tonne gastanks and the like back at them. Marzu and his servo-skulls are flying all over the place, too, trying to keep the creature spot-lighted and under fire until he can hover up to it and attack in hand to hand.
GM : Baron ****ing Harkonnen...
Malakai : But only half as disgusting.
Xanthis, on the other hand, is off sprouting extra limbs, wings, and armoured disembowelling spikes before he makes his own attempt. This is unfortunate, since it makes him indistinguishable from the mutants Malakai hunts, or from a psyker who has lost control of his powers and is mutating uncontrollably.
Malakai : Hmm... *takes aim* Well, demon trumps mutant. *Shoots demon, achieves nothing*
Adrik : Maybe you should have shot the 'mutant'
Eventually it's Xanthis who gets the critical hit in ( and narrowly avoids being gunned down in turn ).
GM : The girl's body comes apart into streamers of sizzling flesh, each fragments bubbling and writhing as the demon frantically tries to hold its host together, until it fails in the attempt, the fragments splatter and stick all over you, and the entity hangs for a moment as an anthropoid mass of yellow-green fire before dispersing utterly, the wave of unnatural energy hooking deep into the arachnid response somewhere deep in your psyche and leaving you all on your knees vomiting uncontrollably in atavistic revulsion.
Adrik : Ew.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Hang about, I don't eat, what about me?
GM : All your oil-pumps back up.
Returning to the marginally more pleasant parts of the ship, they learn that the Lord-Captain's illness is a severe blow to the ship's future. Under the conditions of the Warrant of Trade, the Rose Tattoo may next be shipping out under the command of a five-year-old, even if van Baroque's relatives don't all scramble to size control of the dynasty. Marzu decides that he'll burn that bridge when he comes to it, and has the bad news broadcast to the homeworld anyway. Also buried among the thousands of pages of the Warrant are other more promising conditions - such as their right to demand troops from any planetary governor they can intimidate, and their ability, as vassals of the van Baroque dynasty, 'to act in the Dynasty's best interest' when the Lord-Captain is otherwise engaged. Tech-Priest Marzu happily promotes himself to Acting-Captain, and orders the ship to rendezvous with an Adeptus Mechanicus fleet he knows about.
Malakai : If you don't mind, I'm going to the Temple of the God-Emperor. With Marzu as Captain, I suddenly feel the need to pray.
GM : Hey, this is what happens when your First Officer gives the Captain a stroke.
Malakai : What they do in the privacy of their cabins is no business of mine.
Adrik : OK - Lord-Captain - if you don't want us to conquer this planet in your name, nod your head.
van Baroque's life-support : beep...beep...beep...
Adrik : Rightio then.
GM : If you insist on going to war, then you're going to need troops. After all, standard Imperial Doctrine in these circumstances is 'Throw wave after wave of your own men at them, and clog their cannons with wreckage'. And you don't have that many men.
Malakai : I'm not against going to war. *pats his beloved las-gun* Josephine was getting hungry anyway.
Re-emerging into real space to take navigational bearings, Marzu soon spots the plasma drive of a starship making its way slowly across the star system. Indeed, as usual, the bastard passes the required test by over 100.
GM : *sarcastically* Marzu opens a porthole, sticks his head out, looks around, and says 'over there!'
Marzu : No wonder no-one else spotted it, they were too busy screaming and trying not to be sucked out the hole.
Malakai passes the relevant test by 40, a huge success by most standards. Marzu, however, passes the test by 100. Again.
Marzu : Tell me something I don't know.
Malakai's player : *headdesk*
GM : So now you've humiliated the Navigator, the Medics, the Lord-Captain, and the ships xenographer. Have I left anybody out?
Malakai : Will somebody tell me why we even bother having crew, when we've got him?
GM : Will somebody tell me why you even have other PCs when you have him?
GM : Right. While Marzu is off attempting the browbeat the Chief Enginseer into letting him tinker with the stardrives, Malakai identifies the ships as part of a Stryxis caravan. Not only that - by passing the test by 40 he knows that not only are they deviant alien scum that should be exterminated as soon as convenient ( like every other xenos race in 40K ), but the more nuanced facts that they aren't particularly ill-disposed towards humans, will eagerly trade all sorts of stuff, but occasionally go in for slave-trading and piracy when they think they can get away with it. Marzu gets a message about this "You have email!" and brings up a few jpegs - man-sized skinless dog-embryos with pug-noses four pupiless green eyes, in tattered robes - and additional facts on the species. Such as the fact that they're occasionally known to provide vat-grown soldiers for their customers.
Stryxis Trader : Honoured biped! Greetings, greetings! What may these humble traders offers such as yourself? I am Garrglegarglegargllle, you may call me Sire Blue Sun if you wish. The honoured Acting-Captain has such fine, upright friends! Are they for sale?
Negotiations proceed over dinner in the Trophy Room. Malakai, Adrik & Xanthis are extremely suspicious at repeated attempts by the Stryxis to invite the Lord-Captain aboard their ship to inspect the merchandise, and even more so when attempted scans of the caravan reveal nothing but homogeneous grey fog. At least their prices are good. They trade the current whereabouts of the Mechanicus fleet for an engraved palladium fork from the Lord-Captain's dinner set. Other bargains are perhaps not so acceptable.
Acting-Captain Marzu : I'm told that your species can produce soldiers by demand. I will be waging a war soon, how much for an army?
Sire Blue Sun : Yes, yes, honoured biped! We can grow you much meat, strong and clever as the Acting Captain wants! And all we would ask are the gametes of all your crew!
All : *clutch themselves protectively*
Sire Blue Sun : Think of the strong and clever meat we could grow from the Honoured Acting-Captain's friends!
GM : Shall I resolve the results of the mutiny now or later?
Marzu talks them down to 400 vat-brutes, in return for detailed scans of some 40 of his strongest and cleverest crew.
Sire Blue Sun : *holds up a small bottle and some scissors*
Marzu : No gametes!
Sire Blue Sun : *looks disappointed*
Crewmember : I'm really uncomfortable about this Brother Marzu. I mean, Acting-Captain.
Marzu : Hands off, man. Look at it this way - either you get measured and I get 400 expendable front-line troops, or you don't get measured and I use you on the front-line.
Crewmember : Well, since you put it that way...
Malakai : Will they settle for 'strong'? Intelligence isn't really a feature of this crew.
The Stryxis also gleefully trade with the stormtroopers Malakai risks sending across. One comes back happily waving an Eldar powersword he was given in return for a button. This is promptly confiscated.
Malakai : I'm sorry, corporal, but using Xenos tech is a heresy, especially once we're back within the Imperium.
Trooper : Aw. What about out here?
Malakai : I'll think about it. Hey, Stryxis! Got any Tau pulse pistols?
They do, and even provide some 'meat' for him to test it out on. All they want in exchange is his beloved las-gun.
Malakai : *bristling* I've had this this long-las since I joined the PDF. This gun has saved my life. This gun is my companion.
Sire Blue Sun : We are humble traders, we do not mind who the honoured biped sleeps with.
Marzu, too, ignores the dictates of the Imperium and tries for assorted heretical tech himself - navigational archeotech, alien filtration systems, and warp-detectors.
Acting-Captain Marzu : Got any Void Abaci?
Sire Blue Sun : Alas, if only the honoured biped had been here last week.
Acting-Captain Marzu : Carnelian Sievestones?
Sire Blue Sun : *waving hands apologetically* Out of stock.
Acting-Captain Marzu : Caged Songbirds?
Sire Blue Sun : Why, yes, honoured Acting-Captain! We have many caged songbirds. Or would the honoured biped like us to make him one? We could grow him any kind of flying meat he desires, perfect in every specification!
Examples of the latter are ferried across.
GM : The Stryxis have been busy - you've got a huge range of live, dead, plush and mechanical avioids to choose from. One of them is a homicidal thing with seventeen grapefruit sized eyes and foot-long claws. Another is eight feet tall and bright yellow.
Marzu : That's a big bird.
GM : And one of them is a little mechanical nodding thing that drinks water.
All : *Crowding around* That's so neat! How does it keep doing that?
Sire Blue Sun : I will sell it to you for its hundredweight in platinum.
The vat-brutes are delivered. Marzu wanted them equipped for war. They arrive in a patchwork of shoddy armour, carrying crossbows and spiky clubs.
Marzu : *sighs* I guess I should have worded myself more carefully. Oi! I said I wanted them equipped for war and easy resupply!
Sire Blue Sun : *looks innocent* There are many, many places where war is fought with such tools. And does the honoured biped wish me to sell him more spiky clubs?
Marzu : *after further negotiations* OK, if I throw in this magic floating skull machine, some of these clever injectors for making humans unconscious, and these boots that will let you walk around on the outside of ships, can I get some actual human-made heavy weapons and armour for these brutes?
Sire Blue Sun : Such clever, shiny machines!
Malakai : Errrr... *pointing out just one of the problems with this plan* Are you really going to given them one of our honoured dead?
Marzu : Not my honoured dead - I've got no idea who it used to be. It was the heretek Stylianides' lumin-skull before, after all. And look at that las-hole, you were the one that shot it down, anyway.
Trading completed to mutual satisfaction, Marzu orders the ship on it's way to meet up with the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet, very pleased with his personal bodyguard of 400 heavily armed alien monstrosities. There's no way THIS could end badly...