A Traders Life for me - A Campaign (B)Log

[Surak 402]

Hi All,
 

Yes it’s me again, back after a long period of lurking (during which I had taken a break from GM'ing DH and moved on to pastures Cthuhlu  ) I am once again instigating more DH-rule system related madness.
 

After the interest that the campaign log for my massive two and a half year campaign generated on here a few years back I thought I'd start this one from character creation this time.
 

The Players
All four of the players involved in the campaign this time around were also part of my last DH outing, and the campaign I ran during my lurking period, so its safe to say that not only are the people in question experienced role-player’s they are also very comfortable roleplaying together.
 

The characters
I decided to take a slightly different approach to my campaign this time around, rather than presenting the players with a campaign concept and them designing characters for it I gave them a pile of books (all the relevant character creation books for Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Black Crusade) and 8,000 (relative) experience and told them to create a group of characters which I would then write a campaign for.
 

Now as you may appreciate this initially caused a certain amount of uncertainty from the players as it was not what they were expecting when I told them I was starting a new DH campaign, however, after a few false starts the three players present (one had dropped out of the session at the last moment due to personal reasons but still managed to give me a rough idea of what character he would be building) managed to start talking amongst themselves, with me only providing rules guidance, and soon a very interesting concept had taken root. The three of them decided to create relatively general purpose characters, due to not knowing exactly what they would have to deal with, using the Red vs Blue characters as very general inspiration. After a few hours of going through books, exchanging banter, and eventually writing up some characters, we had three completed characters. So without further waffling from me may I present three quarters of the stars of the story;
 

Allison – Female, Imperial World, Assassin - designed as an all-round killing machine with specialisations in sniping and blades, very loosely based on Tex
 

Commissar Turch – Male, Scholar Progenium, Guardsman – a guardsman that took the Chaliced Commissariat alternate rank an then the officer branch of the career path, a mix of Tucker and Church personality wise apparently
 

Captain Chucker – Male, Noble Born, Guardsman – designed to be the stereo-typical posh officer, no alternate ranks this time but still took the officer path on the career. Again I’ve been informed that the personality is apparently going to be a mix of Church and Tucker.
 

And there we have it for now. I’m hoping to get the final character made at some point this week so we can have our first actual session on Sunday.
 

The Campaign
After we finished the initial build of the three characters, but before I let them loose with 8,000exp, we decided on the sort off campaign that I was going to run (in the very loosest terms).
 

After discussing a few options (Imperial Guard Penal Legion, Arbites Patrol, Inquisitorial Acolytes) the players decided they liked the idea of playing the senior members of a Rogue Trader’s staff. We rationalised the presence of the Guard officer and Commissar by saying that the trader had an Imperial Guard detachment assigned to him as part of a favour owed to him by a high ranking officer. They also decided that they wanted the Rogue Trader in question to be a GM-controlled character.
 

And that’s where we are at this point. On the verge of starting a potentially interesting campaign into the Expanse (and possibly the Reach with the Traders obvious Imperial Guard connections).

Regards for now
 

Surak
 

 

 

[Surak 402]

Hello again,

I’m here with another (slightly later than planned) report from Sunday’s session.

This was a bit of a character creation/house-keeping/rules refresher session as I’ve gained another player since the last post and everyone was finding it difficult to remember the details of the rules after nearly a year and a half playing other systems.

 

So without further ado I would like to introduce you to the cast of this particular campaign;

Techpriest O’Mally, medical liaison to the 601st Independent Infantry Regiment

Seneshal Constantine Crisis ships liaison to the 601st Independent Infantry Regiment

Allison, a professional mercenary working alongside the 601st Independent Infantry Regiment

Captain Leonard L Chucker of the 601 Independent Infantry Regiment

And finally

Commissar Turch Lavernius also of the 601 Independent Infantry Regiment

 

The Story

The general background story leading up to the start of our campaign has also developed a little since my last post.

Originally the players were going to be taking on the roles of a Rogue Trader’s senior staff, however considering the mix of character that had been chosen this option needed a little refinement. Over the week between sessions I spent some time talking to the players and we eventually settled on the following background to explain how everyone ended up in their current situation;

“The 601st Independent Infantry Regiment is a company sized formation that was formed by the Munitorium from the survivors of an entire army group that was serving in the Margin Crusade on the edge of the Calixis sector. Due to the exceptional conduct of the members of the 601st they were given a choice, either muster out of the Guard to take the role of PDF garrison on one of the new frontier world that they had helped win or join the Rogue Trader Atticus Finn as part of his household troops. The ‘Regiment’ chose to sign on with the Rogue Trader. At the same time as the 601st were signing on with House Finn a professional mercenary by the name of Allison, who had been operating alongside the regiment for several months, also decided to sign on with the Trader as well.

The regiment was taken to House Finn’s estate on Malfi where they were trained in ship-board routines and given chance to adapt to working as part of a private army rather than the Imperial Guard. Once this familiarisation training was complete they were assigned to Atticus Finn’s flagship – The Mars class Battle-cruiser Endeavour – which was leading a small taskforce into the Koronus Expanse to take direct control of the trade being conducted there in the House’s name.

The 601st were transported to Port Maw aboard a House Finn transport where they met the Endeavour and her escorts. It was here that they were introduced to their two liaison officers between them and the ship’s crew, techpriest Omally and Seneshal Crisis.”

And that is where we kicked the campaign off.

The brief introduction session I made was just to get people used to the Dark heresy System again, it mainly consisted of the players spending time in a bar on Port Wonder called ‘The Union of Drinks, Bar, Grill, Casino, and Embassy” where they narrowly avoided a brawl with some Kroot, witnessed a particularly nasty Bounty Hunter getting executed, and got roaring drunk. Once back on the ship and sobered up they attended a meeting of the senior members of the Rogue Traders fleet where Atticus Finn briefed them on the mission into the Koronus Expanse – To establish a permanent presence of House Finn in the expanse to better monitor the House’s trading ventures there.
 

And that is where I left them, preparing for the transition to Footfall.

Regards

Surak

[Surak 402]

Hi again,

Time for a quick update,

Firstly we have now switched the combat rules for this campaign over to those for the Only War Beta to give them a proper test.

We played a session Sunday night where the group blasted through the first stage of the current adventure (this was about 5hrs play)

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As the fleet made its transition out of the warp at footfall they recieved there orders, they were to act as the bodyguard for one of the ship-captains in the Rogue Traders fleet (not to be confused with the Imperial Gaurd Captain PC) as they went on ahead to Footfall to re-negotiate some of House Finn's trade contracts before anyone realised there was a massive fleet in the area. The first three meetings went well with the security team manageing to the keep out of trouble and the negotiation team securing the backing of the Ecclesearcy, the Mechanicus, and a local trade house called House Cleasean (returning from my previous DH campaign). However the last meeting didn't go as smoothly. They were warn up-front by the ship-captain they were escorting that it might get a little tense as they were meeting with a Free-Trader who, so the grape-vine says, has managed to upset a powerful inquisitor. This was enough justification for House Finn to cancel there contract with him, soething he is unlikely to be happy about.

Before they met with the trader they manged to convince the assassin to replace one of the ship-captians retainers as an extra level of insurance, whilst the Commissar openly presented himself as the ship-captains bodyguard to try and divert any attention from the other retainers and the seneshal and Techpriest ated as advisors. Captain Chucker and his squad that he brought for the bodyguard duty waited in the outer office having a glaring match with a dozen thugs, two Kroot, and a gentleman with suspiciously pointy ears. As the meeting went progressivly south the Free-Trader attempted to cut his losses and attacked the ship-captain with a digi-weapon (a badly timed intimidate test from the Commissar resulting in a botched willpower test from the NPC resulted in the NPC panicking) and then being swiftly beheaded by the assassin. The Techpreist, Seneschal, and Commissar then swiftly dealt with the other four goons in the room before rushing to the outer office incase the ssquad needed any help, It turns out they need not have worried as 12 Minerva-Aegis las-carbines at close range more than made a mess of the Kroot and Thugs, whilst the suspected Eldar had the good sense to make it obvious he wasn't going to fight.

Whilst searching the place they found evidence of the Free-Traders involvement with the Cold Trade, and a warning from an unknown source on Scinitllia that the Inquisition wanted him dead. They also found a massive stash of weapons, a heavily modified Halo barge, and the location of the two ships that the Free-Trader used to command.

With there buisness conculded the party informed the Rogue Trader of the outcome and were immediately greated by the massed house fleet moving into close orbit around Footfall and boarding the two Free-Trader ships.

The party were then told to start snooping around to try and locate a suitible planet to use as a base of operations for House Finn in the Expanse.

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and thats where we left it.

all in all a good session from the players, a few very unlucky NPC rolls from me, and proof that you really can make a nasty regiment from the Only War regiment creator, they used most of there Additional Equipment points to kit the whole of there infantry company with Minerva-Aegis Las carbines (from the Inquisitors Handbook) and Kasrkin armour from Ascension.

I should probably note at this point i've made a few changes to the standard DH rules to spice things up a little the important ones are;

• For each degree of success that a attack gets to hit add an 5 points of damage to the attack (melee and ranged), this stacks with other similar abilities but will only apply to a single shot (so automatic fire does not benefit)
• The maximum number of wounds your character can have will be your Toughness Bonus times two plus your homeworld’s modifier from character generation. This may be exceeded at the GM’s discretion and does increase if you upgrade your toughness. This does not mean that you automatically get this number of wounds; it simply limits the number of times you can buy sound constitution.

These rules are applied to all characters (PC's and NPC's alike) and combined with NPC's being able to generate Rightous Fury makes combat a somewhat bloody affair.

Now I jkust have to find a couple of planets for the players to try and discover information about.

As always any comments welcomed

Regards

Surak