A psykers Background

[RoBro 0]

       My acolytes were investigating a house when people started rushing in and trying to take them using non lethal weapons. They (the kidnappers) tied them up, put sacks over there heads and kicked them a couple times. The psyker started casting spells on all the kidnappers which I thought was a little cheap or kind of silly because he could not see or hear at all ( flash bang) but the rules allow it. He really wanted to roll on perals of the warp because he wanted to rip a whole in the galaxy and kill the people kicking him. Well not to far from that he got an unbound deamon host inside him and went crazy and killed every one.Even his fellow acolytes. When you have a unbound deamon host inside of you, does the player get to control it? or do I have to being the GM? thats one question. 

      After they all died they made new characters, the pysker made another psyker. And for his background he wrote this, with all seriousness too. "When my friend and I were walking home from school one day (He means like Elementry School) I felt really sick and I had a huge headache. My friend asked me if I was feeling all right and when I looked at him a beam of light shot out of my forehead and sliced him in half. I screamed and ran home, when I got there my parents were crying and when I asked them what was wrong they said "The ships are here for you" and then the rest is history"""""""""".

     Could any of this actually happen!? I said I didnt like it and asked why but I didnt have a good reason because I dont know if they have school or if the "SHIPS" get you at a young age or if they inform your parents?

 

[Gregorius21778 249]

FIRST of all: if a daemon possesses a psyker, the GM get´s the controll. Even more simple: if anything takes control of a pc, the GM takes control. Since the GM is everything but the pc.

Talking about flashbang: Yep, this power puzzles me a lot. But remember that it is ALWAYS centered on the pc (50m are the range). Since it is a flashBANG, simply covering the eyes might make things easier, but I do ask for checks to resist from the surrounding pc as well. Even if they got a warning.

Talking ripping a hole in the warp: As I see the rules, a psyker can only affect the number of power dice he roles. If a nine comes up, fine. If its leads to something terrible, fine. But as well, nothing could happen or simply frightening winds or something like that.

Talking the psykers background: To be honest, I think it is possible. A little to much like a super hero comic, but possible. But there is one thing feeling very wrong: the power of it. If (as a child) he was able to come about with something like that, it makes one wonder why his powers "vanshid" later on. I do have the same problem with the "Nascent Psyker" from IH, but the game uses similiar rules there (not sanctioned = lots of power but no control). Perhaps the sanctioning "blocks" something. I do not know.

The thing about the ships is total possible. After all, canon says that the black ships fetch psykers.

[Luthor Harkon 13]

RoBro said:

My acolytes were investigating a house when people started rushing in and trying to take them using non lethal weapons. They (the kidnappers) tied them up, put sacks over there heads and kicked them a couple times. The psyker started casting spells on all the kidnappers which I thought was a little cheap or kind of silly because he could not see or hear at all ( flash bang) but the rules allow it. He really wanted to roll on perals of the warp because he wanted to rip a whole in the galaxy and kill the people kicking him. Well not to far from that he got an unbound deamon host inside him and went crazy and killed every one.Even his fellow acolytes. When you have a unbound deamon host inside of you, does the player get to control it? or do I have to being the GM? thats one question.

After they all died they made new characters, the pysker made another psyker. And for his background he wrote this, with all seriousness too. "When my friend and I were walking home from school one day (He means like Elementry School) I felt really sick and I had a huge headache. My friend asked me if I was feeling all right and when I looked at him a beam of light shot out of my forehead and sliced him in half. I screamed and ran home, when I got there my parents were crying and when I asked them what was wrong they said "The ships are here for you" and then the rest is history"""""""""".

Could any of this actually happen!? I said I didnt like it and asked why but I didnt have a good reason because I dont know if they have school or if the "SHIPS" get you at a young age or if they inform your parents?

 

1. As Gregorius mentioned, the GM takes control and acts reasonably (or in case of a daemon reasonably unreasonable...).

2. This could certainly happen as the powers of the psyker is revealed (ie. becomes nascent). To qoute the IH regarding the possible effect of the reveal: "..., arcs of lightning bursting from the Acolyte,..." This fits rather well with the description of your player.

3. Your question is whether there are schools in the Imperium of Men? There are and there are not. This is like the question whther there are schools on planet earth (only multiplied by 1,000,000). Yes there are, but not everywhere and not all are akin or even similiar. Most civilized worlds and hive-worlds will have ertain (elementary) schools. Higher education though is often rather restricted in the IoM, but there are still certain education centres for the higher classes in most cases (up to the Ministorum administered Schola Progenium).

4. The Black Ships mostly get you at a young age, or rather your chance of survival is higher then, but one could still wait for years and stay for years on the Black Ships while they travel to Terra.

5. Sometimes they might inform the parents, sometimes they shoot them on the spot. Might depend on whther Witch-Finder Rykehuss or Inquisitor Kaede finds you for example...

 

BTW: No sane Sanctioned Psyker would deliberately risk tearing a hole into the fabric of space even under the direst of circumstances. Let alone one so mundane as being kidnapped by unknown gangers.

 

Gregorius21778 said:

Talking the psykers background: To be honest, I think it is possible. A little to much like a super hero comic, but possible. But there is one thing feeling very wrong: the power of it. If (as a child) he was able to come about with something like that, it makes one wonder why his powers "vanshid" later on. I do have the same problem with the "Nascent Psyker" from IH, but the game uses similiar rules there (not sanctioned = lots of power but no control). Perhaps the sanctioning "blocks" something. I do not know.

The sanctioning 'blocks' something more or less for sure. The Psyker is heavily conditioned and maybe parts of his brain are even modified by psycho-surgery so that he is not a loose cannon so to speak.

[Jack of Tears 2]

As everyone else has said, the pc loses control of the character, period.  That said, Chaos would love to get its hands on a Psyker so mentally unstable that he wants to tear open holes to the void merely because he was beaten and humiliated ... it might continue to make use of him, dropping him off on strange planets with no memory of what happened last and the demon host laying in wait to spring out and have fun once he calls for help again ... choas could have great fun with such a toy.

The "ray out of the head" is a bit cheasy and I might recommend to him he change it to bolts of lighting tearing out of his eyes and leaving the area around them permenately blackened and scarred. 

The Black Ships come when they come and gather every psyker they are aware of - though typically the act of gathering those budding psykers is the duty of the local adeptus.  If it was found that he had just killed someone the experience would probably be horrifying for him as he was bound and warded, black hooded and purged before being placed in the common cells.  Most of these psykers on the ships are likely kept sedated through the liberal application of drugs, while they are taught the lessons about the holy Imperium by ministorum acolytes.  Realistically, considering the kind of training and suffering would be Imperial psykers go through, killing his childhood friend should probably be merely one small trauma among many worse.  Only the spiritually strongest survive the training on holy terra.

 

[Cryxx 0]

The rules-related questions have been answered so I'll stick to the fluff one.

Personally I would say "go back and do it again" because that background really sounds like something I should read in a Marvel comic.
Although it is possible that he would find out he had psychic powers by coinsidence the whole "cut my school friend in half on our way home  from school" seems like an easy, cheap way to get the background writing over with.
Being a psyker is not a pleasent ting, it's not a "yay I'm psychic, wuuuh cake for all" type of situation, many psykers try to hide it from those around them out of pure fear and being taken by the black ships is not the same as say being transfered to another school, it's a horrid experience that leaves scars on your mind and proberbly soul...and don't even get me started on trying to rip a whole in reality on purpose.

To be honest, and I know I'm gonna sound like a jerk when saying this, but it seems to me that this person shouldn't play a psyker since he clearly haven't grasped what they are about and I have tried to GM a group with a psyker how used his powers "cause it was funny", a psyker only use his power when he has to...at least the sanctioned psykers.

[Polaria 15]

As Cryxx pretty much said being psyker isn't something "cool" and "funny". Its supposed to be a **** ride on highway of pain and torment. For example, the "Marvel Background" converted to DH would translate to something like this:

"When I was a child one year I started to suffer from horrible headaches and nightmares. Sometimes I got seizures without any warning and had to spend several weeks in hospital regularly as they tried to find out what was wrong. Almost everyone in the school though there was something wrong with me and people made fun of me and pestered me over my seizures. One day when my friend and I were walking home from school one day I felt really sick and I had a huge headache. My friend asked me if I was feeling all right and when I looked at him bolts of lightning shot out of my forehead and burned him alive. It took several seconds before he died and he was screaming and begging for mecry all the time. I screamed and ran home, when I got there my parents were crying and when I asked them what was wrong they said "The ships are here for you".

First I was taken to a local Adeptus Arbites jail where I stayed for six months before I was ruled ready for transfer aboard Black Ship. I remember very little from that time, except that I was hungry, cold and slept very much. I think they kept me drugged there all the time. In Black Ship is was put into a solitary confinement cell. It was a small 8 feet by 8 feet ferrocrete block with one hole in the ground to use as toilet and old, dirty mattress to lay down on. It was dark, silent, lonely and I only got out for questioning every now and then. Many times I was going mad from the boredom and loneliness. I hallucinated and was afraid I would die. After some time I started to be afraid I would not die and the pain would just go on and on forever... I thought nothing was worse. I was wrong then, but I realized it only after sanctioning rituals began..."

 

[Harlec 0]

A Psyker would never willing open a rift into the warp. Hey, these guys carry mercy blades to comitt suicide bevor this happens... and trust me the conditioning for a starting psyker (low power, fresh conditioning, Low insanity & Corruption ).

[Polaria 15]

Harlec said:

A Psyker would never willing open a rift into the warp. Hey, these guys carry mercy blades to comitt suicide bevor this happens... and trust me the conditioning for a starting psyker (low power, fresh conditioning, Low insanity & Corruption ).

Actually a freshly conditioned psyker wouldn't even need mercy blade. His heart would probably stop the moment he decided to open the rift.

 

[numb3rc 247]

Polaria said:

 

Actually a freshly conditioned psyker wouldn't even need mercy blade. His heart would probably stop the moment he decided to open the rift.

If the conditioning works and isn't broken by possession or the like.

I find one part of that story in particular that I think needs to be changed. The parents wouldn't know that the ships were there for him at all. After all, the Black Ships don't immediately come for one psyker. Maybe when he comes home the place seems abandoned and when he comes in some Enforcers or Arbitrators club him, tie him up, and cart him off to some miserable little cell to wait until a Black Ship comes by. This could potentially be months if he's on a backwater, a time period that would be spent exclusively in darkness and with little food and water. He might later learn that his parents were arrested and brutally interrogated to make sure they weren't trying to hide a Psyker from His servants. Alternately, maybe it was his parents that reported him but are being interrogated none the less to check for taint.