Iron Kingdoms: Only Fools Rush Out - Episode 2

The group gathered up in the Charter house to recover and get a bit of crafting done, a new player had joined the battle, a very very oily dwarf mechanic... which i also have forgotten the name of.

After some investigation in the town (do not remember this part), they have gotten several clues, linked to the package, and to personal quests, like the Gunmage's sister who was a spy for the Khadorans, and Blaze's brother being kidnapped by bandits.

So the group had a few leads, and the one they choosed to follow was hint of a rider, riding towards Fort Ryker, so they rented some horses (except the dwarf who rode on the back of his steamjack).

The trip was mostly uneventful as they had avoided the areas that the bandits regularly attacked and it was mostly military who patrolled this road, so they reached the fort. but instead of entering it, they traveled to a nearby village, where the dwarf outdrank a few mercenaries and learned that the fort was held by some mercenary group that recruited just about anyone, while the gunmage seduced a farmer's wife after learning that the daughter was too young for him.

After figuring out that  they should try to pose as mercenaries, they made their way to the fort and convinced the guards to let them in, but they were warned that when they got inside, they were not allowed to leave (at this point it should be mentioned that the dwarf stayed at the farm to outdrink mercs).

Inside, the group saw that a khadoran army was assembling, most likely to attack corvis... shit, they needed to do something but they could not leave. So far they had a good cover, so by using it for what its worth, they could gather proof and try to find an escape.

After a bit of exploring, they headded into the main fort, found a sideroom and discussed their tactics, they were interupted by a patrol, but managed to come up with a plausible explanation and the patrol went on his way.

Not being granted access to the floors above, they attempted to make their way down into the basement, maybe there was some sort of exit there.

A guard was keeping watch, and behind him was some sort of magical barrier, the PCs said that they had an appointment and was let through. The guard waved a item of sorts and the barrian faded, the PCs passed through and the barrier automaticly recovered.

Downstairs, a battle was sure to start, so they prepared everything they got and peeked around a corner. There they saw a Bloated Thrall with a cannon, along with a thamarite of sorts. Why was this cryxian thamarite working with the khadorans? They did not get the answer to that before Blaze managed to make his presence known.

So a fight started, there was 4 mecha-thralls, 1 bloated thrall, and 1 thamarite, at first the PCs did so much burst damage that I was worried that the PCs would finish the fight in the second round. But when the thamarite cast a powerful AOE spell and the bloated thrall fired his AOE cannon, most of the PCs were down to almost 0 vitality.

To make sure that the enemy did not get to use their AOE, they ran into melee with the enemies, even the ranged PCs, but the weak Mecha-thralls intercepted them, making it hard to reach the bloat and the thamarite, further causing a lot of trouble.

During the fight, Blaze got his rapier eroded by acid from within the bloat and got smashed to the ground, the others got him back up again but he kept going down each round. by the end, there was only 3 players left, the thamarite and the bloat. The thamarite used his aoe, knocked all the players down, and destroyed the bloat by friendlyfire. Then he walked around and taking out the PCs with his staff.

Instead of doing a TPK, The group was imprisoned and robbed of all their gear, including the Package.

The group never learned what happened to the package so I can spoil it here, the thamarite was also a mechanic and he had been building a helljack in secret, this cortex was different than regular ones, it made the Helljack more sophisticated, while not being able to communicate, it would be able to analyse tactics and make its own plans. It was impossible to be bonded with a warcaster however, so while it could give itself orders, it would not benefit from the abilities of 'jack marshals or warcasters.

Next up; the PCs try to escape:

Iron Kingdoms: Only Fools Rush in - Episode 1

Soo much warhammer 40k, time for some different games. Lets start with my first game of iron kingdoms, a game I found in the hobby store that my group played in, and I was immediatly sold when I saw that you could play as a Gunmage. Another friend also liked the game so we both studied it and tested the system before getting a group togeather to play.

The group consisted of me as a GM;
- a Sorcerer named Solomon (aka ego-psyker from my previous game)
- a Ranged named Ichabod (who played a stealthy assassin in my former game... i got to hand it to him, I did not remember him so he did a REALLY good job with staying in the background)
- a Gunmage that I dont remember the name of (aka the sororitas from my previous game)
- and a duelist named Blaze Heartly (aka the redemptionist from my previous game)

The group started out being called upon by the local city watch in Corvis, and asked to help out with a hostage situation, the lieutenant's wife and child had been kidnapped and the kidnappers demanded that he handed a package marked Miscellanious surplus, to them, and the package was currently in the possession of a alchemist. The City watch could not be linked to this, so thats why the group's mercenary charter was given the task.

After a bit of chatting and a few minor encounters with the regular people of the city, they came to the alchemist's house and saw 2 soldiers of the golden crucible standing outside, guarding the entrance. The Solomon thought it would be a good idea to climb up on the roof in plain sight, making the guards really agitated, so when Blaze tried to talk to them, they were forced to warn him that if he took a single step further towards them, they would shoot (they had cannonshields, which would really hurt).

Seeing no other way, they all opened fire while Solomon climbed up on the roof, they had almost killed the Crucible guards when Solomon dropped inside the building, just to discover a fuse had just ran out, and the top floor erupted in an explosion, sending Solomon flying out the window he just had jumped through, then 3 storied down to the cobblebrick road, sending him from full health, down to a critical wound that left him scarred for life (-1 to all social test except intimidate, which gained +1).

The others were knocked down and recovered in time to see the crucible guards running away. The building was burning and they had to do something, so Blaze and the gunmage forced themselves inside, discovered a signature marking of a gang by the docks and no indication that the package was in the building. So they left the burning building and made their way into the city to avoid any guards that would try to stop them to ask questions.

Looking around the docks, they found a barge that belonged to the gang, so the idea to take over the barge stealthily was considered, but as soon as one of the barge's crewmates opened fire at the first PC to make the pier floorboards creak, they charged in and slayed everyone. Except 2, 1 crewmate was unconcious, and there were 2 prisoners on the barge, 2 golden crucible guards.

One of the guards had been executed, the other jumped into the river to avoid the ones that tried to execute him, and the attacked from earlier that day.

With everyone down, the hatches to the lower decks opened, and out stepped a woman in robes and a large ogrun with a giant shield and wielding a 2handed cleaver in 1 hand... this was a real fight.

The robed woman casted a spell and all the people they had just killed, was raised as undeads... this was horrifying.

The fight was difficult but some interessting things happened, Blaze went down bleeding to death, but the gunmage used all his skills and actually managed to stabilise Blaze by doing the following: Shot 1 undead in melee with a thunderbolt (knockback) so he was not in melee anymore, ran over to blaze and used Medicine to stabilise him... and reloaded his magelock.

Another thing was that Blaze went down, got up, went down, got up, went down, got up... it was getting quite tiresome, but comical.

Then there was the gunmage's thunderbolt that hit the Ogrun, kocked him back into the Robed woman, and killed her with slam damage. The ogrun was brought low soon after.

When the fight was done, Ichabod and Blaze wanted to interrogate the last surviving crewmmeber, while Solomon and the gunmage went below deck to figure out what was there, however, something felt wrong and the gunmage came back up.

Solomon entered the captain's cabin and saw the package opened, he looked at it and saw that it was important, but somehow evil, while he had little idea of what it was, he took it and never wanted to give it away. (it was a Cryxian cortex, aka a brain for necromancers steamjacks... which is this world's equivalent of spacemarines).

Meanwhile on deck, I believe that I managed to roleplaying the captured crewmate really well, as we ignored all dicerolls and the players asked questions in character, while I answered them in character.

Once they had what they needed, including Solomon and the package (solomon was carrying it and he did not want to give it to anyone). They binded their prisoner and dragged him after them.

When they left the pier, they met the guard Lieutenant and they were ready to hand the package over (solomon still refused), they mentioned the lieutenant's wife and child, and the lieutenant laughed. He had lied, he wanted the cortex for other reasons, and before they could negotiate anything, he had gotten enough of waiting for them to hand it over, so he attempted to take it by force.

The PCs was caught in the open when the lieutenant and several watchmen attacked them, unfortunatly, their prisoner was hit by the first volley and died, fortunatly, there was plenty of cover for the rest. However, they were outmatched.

They had not recovered from their previous fight and was in quite a lot of trouble, but then they saw 3 members of their charter, the actual leaders joining the fight to help out. A large trollkin with a shield and sword, a man in gasmask that threw grenades everywhere, and a arcanist that help up a shield so they could get closer to the fight without taking much damage.

The fight was almost over when a large steamjack entered the fight and caught the lieutenant unaware, it grabbed him and held him immobile, the rest of the guards gave up then. Shortly afterwards, the leader of the charter came into view, wielding her wrench and shotgun ready for use.

With a quick wrapup, the group managed to get the corrupted guards imprisoned and a new lieutenant had stepped up for now, this one could be trusted a little bit more at least. They got to rest and recover before setting out towards their new leads.

Dark Heresy: Ok, maybe I do remember this - episode 5 - last episode

Ok, we were at the potentional final showdown and I had plans for wrapping up the campaign for some reason (I think I was going to have my final exam and then get ready to move to wales for a year).

For this session, 2 players could not make it, the Psyker who would die, and the cleric. I had felt bad for killing the psyker and trying to figure out how a new person could join up, but since he was not there, it made it easier. However, while we were playing in a hobby store and the one that closed down for the evening were not in out game (yes we stayed after closing time tanks to an arrangement), I asked if he would like to join our last session, he said no, but stood in the door to listen to the start of our session, which went something like this:

GM: "So you see this large shade emerging from the Psyker, threatening to rip its way through"....
Store-keep: "ok, im in, who do I play?"

We all laughed at that, then we discussed what we could do to accomodate for him, which really just boiled down to playing 1 out of 2 secret characters i had prepared, playing the ork trappa who felt bad and wanted to help them afterall... or play the cleric, he went for the cleric.

So the daemon was ripping its way through the materium and the group was preparing to fight, when the psyker's body fell limp and the shadow exploded in a shockwave of dispersed warp energy.

The cleric was thrown into a tree, hit his head hard and the first thing he said when he came to was "who am I?"

The rest recovered to see the dead psyker and a man standing at the enterance of the spaceship, he had the mark of the inquisition on him. The group recovered as fast as they could, while making sure that the cleric believed he was named something that had to do with tits (forgot the word we used). The Inquisitor made a quick introduction, saying that he was an interrogator (not a full fledged inquisitor) and he needed their help, while completely ignored the dead psyker. Noone knew how he stopped the daemon, and the only one who would have an idea was now dead, they still had a bad feeling about it.

The interrogator was George Gibbs, while he did not say how he arrived where he was, he did say that he survived in stasis for an undetermined time. Now he needed the help of several people and equipment in order to save his brother, Henry Gibbs, who was still on the ship.

The group explained that they needed something from the plasma generators and George said he would point them the way if they helped rescue his brother, which they agreed to.

So they went through the ship to a heavy storage room with several seals around it and a LOT of rubble in front of it, they cleared this away with George watching, then they opened the door (it was not locked), inside, they saw a man chained to the wall of a square room, with lots of occult runes covering every surface of the room. The man looked completely normal but looked asleep.

George stood outside and pointed at a spesific rune that did not look much different form the  rest "erase that rune". The PC did not ask questions and removed this, and with that, George stepped inside and erased 3 more, leaving the rest. Then he walked over to his brother and started taking off the chains while talking to him, and just quickly informing the PCs of the directions to the plasma generator.

The PCs felt annoyed that they did not get much more help but they made their way towards the generator, encountering a lot of obstruction along the way, having to go a long way around. When they arrived in the generator room, they heard their vox activating along with their microbeads. With a distorted voice, someone said "we have gotten what we came for, awaiting pickup"... The PCs finally understood that if George got to the ship, they would be left there, he did not seem like someone who cared about them, so they got on their vox and said "ignore last message, someone is trying to steal the flyer"... the voice of George Gibbs became clear on the vox now "You are dead!".

The PCs had yet to get the part, so the sororitas franticly tried to get it along with the cleric while the redemptionist took up cover position waiting for them to come. At first they heard nothing, then they started to hear sounds of bolts exploding, George had apparently no patience for going the long way around and hence blasted his way through the blockades, which would take longer. So they had a plan, once they had the part, they would take the long way back, and avoid George and his brother.

This would not be the case, as they came up behind them, instead of ignoring them, they took the chance to ambush them. throwing a flash bang, the cleric not understanding how it worked and ran in at the same time instead of waiting for the flash (blinding himself... this was on purpose, and it was funny, but dangerous), the rest took cover and started fighting George, which proved to be a radical psyker, using insanity and corruption invoking powers along with a powersword and boltpistol. While his brother was floating in the air, chains still attached to him and using telekinesis powers. Every cut that was inflicted on Henry revealed that something more terrifying was lurking below his skin. The Players had at this point already figured out that they were up against a daemon host.

The battle reduced everyone to critical wounds but at last the Redemptionist used a power called Martyr, which dealt a LOT of damage to psykers and daemons, sending the daemon in the host back to the warp while destroying the body, and impaling George on the chainsword... however, George had a displacementfield which caused a lot of trouble in the fight, it activated this time, teleporting both him and the redemptionist into the warp, to where they were both unprotected from the influences that exist in the warp.

This is a potentional plot hook that I have yet to use for my games, and have yet to find a good place to use it, so maybe we will see a return of George in some... other.... form...

Anyway, the rest of the group who survived, including the sororitas... who lost all her fatepoints at the very first session, had survived all this time... it was quite the feat, but I dont remember doing anything about it, as it got late and we needed to finish the game.

So we wrapped up, the PCs being rescued, learning that while they were gone, eldars had visited the ship and was somehow helping out restoring Lord Captain Tristan to full health (with a few internal cybernetic), Tristan then had a chat with the eldars in private, before informing the PCs and Navigator Gary Carbona that he was leaving, taking one of the few still working warp-capable ships in the graveyard and setting course for Thamar Praxis. Since the PCs had distinguesed themselves in service, he invited them to join him as acolytes (Tristan had readily revealed his inquisitor badge, and everyone seems to already know this but still called him lord captain).

When the PCs asked what they were going to do at Thamar Praxis, the HQ of the inquisition, Tristan answered. "we are going to steal an artifact from right under the high lord inquisitor's nose"

Dark Heresy: Ok, maybe I do remember this - episode 4

The group had some time to recover and get some reward before they were given a new task. Some time ago, Grimstuff the Ork mekboy had wandered around the other spacehulks, looking for parts to use for a project of his, but during this time, he had activated the ships engines and sent the ship crashing into a nearby planet. The ship ratings of the Lost have found documentations showing that the ship had a lot of similarities and plenty of the parts could be used to repair damaged parts of the end of time, the plasma cores in particular. So the PCs were given the order to go planetside, find the ship and recover the parts for the plasma cores if possible, even if it was damaged, it could possible be repaired so it would be worth a look.

The PCs were given a flyer which had been recovered not too long ago, and a long range vox. The flyer had an assigned pilot, they were dropped off and then it would return to the End of time and wait for their signal to be picked up.

So the group set out, but not before being notified that the spook psyker had died to his injures and the cleric had informed the group that one of the redemptionists from the chapel was willing to help their cause.

So they set out, the planet was a forest world, causing it to be difficult to land, so first they attempted to land near the ship... oh shit, it was surrounded by an ork base... fly away quickly. Instead, they settled on landing in a clearing a distance away, so they could sneak into the ship under cover of the darkness.

Walking through the forest was not that difficult but a few difficulties were encountered anyway. First they were attacked by some sort of scaled lizard-panter, then they came to a lake, they could go around but they thought that more of the beasts were stalking them so they tried to pass a cliffside along the lake that would be the shortest route, however, they all failed, in turn falling into the water, and the last ones being attacked by another beast, and willingly jumping into the water.

There was some horrible failing with swimming tests, causing the cleric and the ego psyker to burn a fatepoint, maybe even the redemptionist. As they burned the points, a giant lake-monster (crocodile-like fish) tried to nom them, but got ahold of the rope with them hanging on each side of the mouth of this massive creature. It emerged from below the surface, the rope snapped and sent 2 of the PCs flying towards the shore, with the last person (who did not burn fatepoint afterall) walking along the lake-floor, towards the shore while holding his breath (this was due to a very heavy armour)

This reminds me, I should mention the landing, they did land on a pentagon shaped platform, which prooved to be a tomb of sorts with lots of mastercrafter ceremonial weapons, only the cleric used these, and with the psyker completely ignorant, did not notice that these items were cursed with the souls of the dead. While the weapons and armour (1 set + a few pieces) were designed for shorter than normal humanoids, noone knew if this was aliens, abhumans or humans that came here from a high-gravity planet, they were all short anyway.
During the trip towards the lake, they encountered the stalking beast, but they also encountered a hostile warp-ghost, the redemptionist managed to take it out but they had suffered a lot due to its attack.

Now, back to the lake shore:
They could not continue with everyone being so injured and tired, so they had to set up camp, far away from the lake and the crocodile-fish as possible. With double watch, they managed to get at least some rest, giving the ones who were hurt the most, the better part of the night. In the morning, they were all woken up by a warp-fart... that is to say that the player who played the ego-psyker had found another exploit in his psychic powers, healing everyone up to full health in a matter of seconds with no difficulty. (So i had to put limitations on the power, it worked like it should in combat, but out of combat, due to the adrenaline not being as present as during combat, things went slower, so instead of fully healing someone in 18 seconds, it took  5 minutes per wound, 15 minutes per critical wound).

So with all of them back to full health and nothing bad except the warp-fart, they continued on their way. After a little while, they came across one of these stalking beasts, trapped in a primitive hunter's trap. They heard more sound and hid. An ork appeared, watched the stalker for a bit before stepping in and skewering it with a spear. Once the ork made sure the beast was dead, it was cut down and thrown over the shoulder.

At this point, one of the players made himself be noticed... that is to say that the Redemptionist stepped in with his chainsword, ready for a fight. The ork however, ignored him and went on his way, leaving the group shocked... "what? an ork that refuse a fight? what is going on?"

They followed the ork to learn this, and passed by a field of plants that released spores every now and then, all of them failed to spot this or resist its effect and since that point was affected by something called Tranquil, a drug that severely reduces the hostility within certain creatures (not the stalking beasts).

When they saw the camp, they saw an ork guard sleeping outside, the ork trappa carrying his prey inside, the ship was quite visible within the ork base. One of the players snuk up to a low wall and looked inside, orks were walking around doing anything and everything, then a gretchin spotted the PC.

There was a staredown for a little while before the PC waved to the gretchin... to which the gretchin waved back and went on his way.... wow strange, much confusion.

Having learned that the orks was not hostile, they all walked in the main gates, the sleeping guard barely noticing them before going back to sleep. The orks saw them but ignored them, so the PCs just strolled up to the main entrance, where they met a ork with a staff and robes... "Aaah, starwalkas. come! Grimstuff waits" the robed ork said before walking to what usually is the engineering deck on the spaceship.

Grimstuff? the ork that worked for the los pENETRADAS? ok, they were getting somewhere, the ork had worked with humans before, maybe they could talk to him about it, he was a mekboy too, he should know a lot about this sort of thing.

So they followed the robed ork to a workshop, there was a lot of metal contraptions in the area, but they saw no ork... "Boss, umies ar ere"... at the voice of the robed ork, one of the large contraptions turned around... a killa kan, "I am Grimstuff, Wot do u umies want?"... the PCs explained their situations and had a discussion with Grimstuff and the Warphead.

They learned that the ship had been broken in two, the part they were looking for lies to the east, Grimstuff assigned one of the ork trappas to their group to guide them past an area that had a LOT of traps, and they would surely be trapped if they did not have a guide.

They also learned about the tranquil, the plant that reduced the hostility in most species, the orks are affected to it but if they feel pain, they are right back to their normal behavious (players were clearly shocked by this, they had planned to attack the orks while they were all dosile, this put a stop to this plan).

The wraphead had explained that Grimstuff was leading them, plotting and planning to set out into the void on his own Waaagh!, but they were still a long way from doing so yet, but the tranquil seems to help a lot due to reducing the infighting between the orks, with only Grimstuff being immune to its effect due to his Killa Kan.

The few PCs who originally served the inquisition (ego-psyker and the sororitas), felt that this is something that should be stopped, but they had no power here, they must return to the inquisition to report... well, at least the sororitas felt like that, I doubt the ego-psyker had the same opinion.

Anyway, they went on their way, easily enough found their way to the other half of the starship with the help of the ork guide, but the guide left when they came into view of the ship as he had no other purpose and he had showed them the way to get back.

So there they stood, outside the entrance of the ship ready to enter... when the ego-psyker said "I'm gonna heal everyone again" (as some had taken some minor damage from traps that the guide had forgotten about).

GM: ok, roll
Player: I rolled a 9... no fatepoints, dammit, ok roll my phenomena
GM: rolls... 100
Player: shit, oh well, havent happened anything bad to me yet so it cant be bad, only the spook-psyker got the bad stuff.
GM: rolls.... 100

The entire table went quiet, the part on the perils of the warp was that the Psyker died instantly, not allowed to burn fatepoints, and a daemon would be in its place. and as the player had min-maxed everything he could, I as a GM was sure that any daemon that would appear in his place, would be powerful enough to cause a TPK.

So we stopped the session here so I could think about it.

Dark Heresy: Ok, maybe I do remember this - episode 3 part 2

Ok, so the group continued, it was pretty straight forward, they got to a place that had some large promethium tanks to the right side, and an elevated position, where a green mutant was shooting at them with a shotgun, missing due to long range. The PCs did not hit either so they approached but successfully realised that the promethium tanks was sabotaged and if they walked past them, it would blow and set them on fire. So they walked along the opposite side, to which the green mutant realised that her plan had failed, so she left, planning a new idea.

The next area where they encountered her, was a dark room with a lot of square boxes or engines (we never specified as far as I remember, it was just to set up the shape of the room). The green mutant had a mutation that gave her incredible speed so she ran around the room. The PCs went in a formation to find her but she avoided them all the time, barely hinting at her location as she ran past their field of view. So in the end, the group was forced to split up in order to corner her.

Their first misstake was when the cleric actually found her, just around a corner with her shotgun in overwatch... point blank range, their second misstake was the spook psyker casting Fear. he did not tell the others about it so they did not expect the psyker to take on a visage of their worst nightmare. Everyone, including the mutant paniced, the cleric got the worst of it, his eyes were glaced and he fell over in a nightmare induced unconciousness (taking over 10 insanity in a extremly horrible fear check)

One of the PCs managed to recover quicker than the mutant and injured her to such a degree that she was forced to run away. So the PCs recovered again and followed, this time to a large water storage, 4 large tanks covered the area, she was at the far end, waiting. They knew it was a trap, but they had to kill her, so they went for it. As they entered, the door behind them was closed with a panel next to the speedy-gonzales, and she shot 2 of the tanks in rapid succession as the group advanced. Water bursted out, starting to fill the room with water, but Speedy was also a wyrd, so she cast a random power (used the spook table) and threw vortex of doom in the middle of the room, blocking their advance.

So the PCs retreated behind the other tanks, the room was not filling as fast but was up to their shins (making it hard to move), so they split up, using ranged, running around the tanks to flank her and trying to counter the vortex with psychic power.

However, as expected with psykers, spook psyker especially, things were going to go wrong, so the spook psyker summoned a smaller version of the Herald of Khorne (forgot their name), and the daemon killed the spook psyker, removing his arm in the process (the psyker lost a fatepoint and then died on the operating table later, then was replaced by a Redeptionist), the daemon attacked the ego psyker on his last round but the psyker managed to parry with a success of 1 in an opposed test (dont remember the roll but something like 28 vs 29, there was some houserules as to dodge and parry but ignoring that for now). So the daemon's hellsword was parried by a mono-sword, the mono-sword was destroyed by its "powerfield" but it returned to the warp afterwards)

The cleric ran up into melee with the Magic-gonzales and got in 1 hit with his holy-club of holiness, before the vortex moved, covering both the gonzales and the cleric, killing the mutant and critically injuring the cleric, then collapsed in on itself and the room again started to fill with water.

With only 1 person left standing, there was a bit of a panic to open the door to the area, but they managed without getting a complete party-kill.

So there was only 1 mutant left now and they had taken some serious beating from single enemies, mutants even, lowly mutants with about +5 or +10 health and 2 positive mutations. Then again, it was the environment and how they used it that caused the trouble.

Again with the memory problems, I do not remember how they got to the last mutant, but they did. He was holed up in the engineering deck, with the plasma generator and had rigged it to blow, unless they did something within 7 rounds... they would all die... everyone, every single one on the ship, there was nowhere they could run, and they would have known this if it were not for the spook psyker (burned his last fatepoint and was slowly dying but wanted to finish the mission before switching character).

The spook psyker failed his test and caused everyone in the party to become frenzied (in newer games, it requires you to attack ANYONE near you, but in this, it was only hostiles), so they all charged in without looking for ambush.

The last mutant was a sniper, who carried a triplex pattern lasgun (used sniper modus to pick off the PCs), he had also put random mines around the area, very few of them were useful, as some was smoke, some was anti-plant, some were frag and some were melta... but the melta ones was never triggered as they were set up on stupid locations (I randomly rolled for each mine, had made a table).

The PCs managed to discover and find the control panel on the first floor (ground floor), while the mutant was sniping at them from a vantage point, 3 floors up. There was a few stairs and walkways to get there.
At the 7th round, they managed to successfully use a tech-use test to activate the cooling system, which gave them another round before TPK, the PC was working on it franticly and had thankfully bought Tech-use the session before. so every round he had to do tech-use tests to buy the group enough time.

It was a VERY VERY close call, as the last person who could do anything before the plasma generators overloaded, managed to hit the correct switch at the mutants vantagepoint (while being shot at by the still not dead mutant). So they were saved by luck and non-stupid actions during the second part of the battle. The mutant however, while dangerous to fight, was oneshotted due to being very very weak, and they had saves the End of Time.

Dark Heresy: Ok, maybe I do remember this - episode 3 part 1

They were in a long hallway, exploring one of the other ships. They see markings on the walls, lots and lots of signs, scriptures and the like, in high gothic. After venturing further down, they started hearing a hymn of some kind, so they snuk towards it, until one of them started a quarrel amongst themselves. When they were done and the mission could continue, the hymn was gone, stopping, wondering what happened, they detected a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was growing brighter.

Something was comming quickly towards them, they spread out what they could, forming a 2 front, 2 back and 1 middle (like 5 on a 1d6), with the 2 in front kneeling down, and they opened fire. The shots lit up the hallway and some hit the thing comming towards them and triggered some sort of powerfield.

A battlesister was comming towards them in an incredible speed, propelled forward with the use of a jetpack, she got into range, droppkicked forward, planting her feet at the chest of the center-man.
Everyone could see the grin made of filed sharp teeth, the mad look in her eyes, and the words she said... "The absence of faith is the mark of the heretic!". Then she kicked back, triggering her jetpack, scorching the center-man in the process.

With a backflip, she landed on front of them and pointed a flamer at them, the ship ratings had no choice, they tried to run but was set alight as the mad battlesister laughed as she purged the "heretics".

...meanwhile, back at the lab... (yes, i ran this small scene for the players, not revealing that they were playing ship ratings)

The players got a explanation of what had happened to their ship and the los pENETRADAS; The navigator's ship had been exploring the koronus expanse, towards a unexplored area when they came across a warpstorm, they were sent off course but recovered swiftly enough due to an experienced crew. However, in the system, they were quickly set upon by pirates and took some serious damage, the Lord Captain (Tristan Mahvorn) ordered the ship to take cover in a dust cloud to loose the pirates, but noone had expected the dust cloud to conceal a starship graveyard.

The ship lost a lot of its functions and were severely crippled, the lord captain was mortally wounded and was put in stasis, most of the other officers went their own way to explore. (with only a brief mention of the names of Seraphine the battlesister and Grimstuff the Ork). The lord captain choose the navigator to lead the survivors before he was put in stasis, and since then, they had been exploring and salvaging everything they could to accomodate for survival, but there were still plenty of unexplored area in this massive graveyard of spacehulks that they had named End of Time.

The PCs asked some questions about what was done and what they could do to help, being given a bit of an update on the activities, they were sent to familiarise themselves with the area first, then report back to the navigator as he needed someone to look into certain cases like why some of the ship rating-explorers have gone missing. (the players went really quiet when I told them this, but refusing the job without a good reason would be metagaming, and I was known for handing out punishment for that sort of thing, usually in the form of less or no exp gained that session).

Now.. the survivors had managed to restore one of the decks of the "lost" (los pENETRADAS' hulk), and made it into a proper town to accomodate everyone's needs, most were done with salvage but the town had just about everything. So the group split up to see of they could make themselves useful by helping out and collecting information at the same time. The sororitas was still heavily injured at this point so she spent her time in the chapel, dedicated to her faith, the cleric did so too but helped to hold sermons and the like (the sister got a fatepoint due to surviving for so long and showing dedication to the emperor), the Cleric got a weapon as a thank you (one of these "clubs" that is considered holy weapons). The Psyker (the one with the ego), did not want to help so he spent his time stealing and exploiting people for money. And the last psyker was just mucking about trying to find something, and came across a drug... Spook...

It should be mentioned that at this point, I completely forgot what was happening, but I remember a few events, there might be more but I cannot remember them, so I'll jump straight into one of the missions that I know the group did. (not the battlesister mission, I had plans for it, but they never got to that)

The navigator was getting some reports about acts of terrorism amongst the survivors on the lower decks (below the town) so the group were to go and investigate this, and if possible, deal with it. So they made their way to the town and got some directions, leading them towards the engineering deck.

The group followed a few clues untill they got into a maze of corridors, there were various arrow signs pointing in various directions but they seemed to lead somewhere. So by following them without any kind of way to navigate, they would get lost trying to find a quick route back, or follow the arrows back, spending a long time doing so. But for now they contiued to follow the arrows, walking into mines and rigged grenades traps. But to the groups relief, the ones who rigged it was an idiot, because one of these were anti-plant mine.

Oh! I remember one of the clues the PCs had gotten, one of the civvies was begging the PCs for help since her husband had been kidnapped by someone and the signs were apparently clues left by the kidnappers. The woman had been told that the PCs would have to be the ones that follows or else she will not see her husband again. (I had considering switching the roles, making it the wife that was kidnapped, but switching up the roles every now and then is a good thing).

Now, they had followed the arrows to a large room with a metal floor, in the middle was a hulking mutant with some kind of crude 2handed shock-maul, and next to him was a man that was tied by wire, the PCs were sure that this was the one that they had to rescue.

On the far side of the room was a door, 2 people stood by it but exited once the PCs arrived. The hulking mutant growled in rough low gothic for the PCs to enter or he would kill the civvie. They did so and the door behind them was shut (metal door, sliding down from the roof). Combat started.

Everything went as expected until the mutant lowered his shockmaul to the floor and flipped a switch... almost everyone except him was knocked to the ground by powerful electricity, the only ones to avoid this was the Spook Psyker who was constantly rolling perils of the warp, and floating in the air with levitate. The rest did whatever they could to try to take down the hulking mutant, but it was incredible difficult. They were at least 4 people at the time, and they were struggling against 1 enemy due to the electricity, some players went unconcious due to fatigue, but in the end, they were victorious...-ish

The man they were sent to rescue had died from being electrocuted too many times, and instead of returning to tell the widow, they continued in order to hunt down the 2 people that left the room when they arrived, because as far as they were concerned, the hulking mutant could not be the brain of the group, not that he could now as the cleric had used his stub revolver to put a manstopper bullet in the mutant's head.

Dark Heresy: What is this? I don't remember this... - episode 2? part 2

I had forgotten a small part from the previous post, when they rescued the psyker. The psyker fell down into the hole and the group followed, They looked around and found a passage they could crawl through, but there was something on the other end, so they tried to quickly return, failing to do so quick enough.

One of the creatures managed to swipe at one of the players, I think it was the sororitas, and brought her wounds down to dangerous levels but not critical. So with a little benny hill sketch, they managed to return to the cantina without too much loss of tension.

Now, back to where we left last post;
The PCs joins up with a group of survivors who were hiding out in a maintenance room. After a quick chat with them, they figured that the ship had crashed, combined with having seen another ship, it might be smart to find that ship in order to see if there was any running systems that could be used as a better base untill they knew what they could do about the situation. Sticking around where there are creatures is too dangerous anyway.

So they started exploring untill they found their way downstairs and to a armoury, which already have been partly looted, there are likely more survivors, but armed and likely panicing, could be dangerous.
Following the direction towards the other ship, they came to a vacuum-bridge to the other ship, someone must already have attached this for some reason.

It must be noted here that the survivors were hiding out in the armory while the PCs scounted ahead, and when they crossed the vacuum bridge, a large piece of metal floated towards the bridge and cut it almost in halv. The tech-priest of the group got dragged out into space and his void suit got damaged, with several attempts to save himself and no fatepoints to burn, he died horrible in space. The others ran towards the far end but did not manage to open the seal on the other side in time, so they got dragged out into space too, but with functioning void suits. With a bit of messing about, they made their way to another maintenance seal and got inside (Barely).

Inside the new ship (Los pENETRADAS) they found some basic gear, a unconcious psyker and a few orks... well, 3 orks with crude (for orks) weaponry and a few gretchins.

One if the items they found was a dataslate, it contained a video, to which they all saw. It was no sound on it, but showed a room with a navigator in it, he was apparently quite distressed, there was also a cat in the room, a strange type of cat. A man entered, looking like he was a man of authority, he was talking to the navigator for a little while before pulling his pistol, talking some more, then aimed at the cat. It looked like quite a tense scene before the man lowered his pistol, turned around and walked out, as someone looking like a sister of battle entered the room, and the videofeed cut out. They checked the title of the video... "sorry".

They dealt with the orks and continued, as they encountered several more orks making their way past a barricade, they ran isntead of trying to hold their ground with limited ammo, running to a sealed door. While being attacked by waves of orks, they opened the door and got through, then shut it down just before a large ork with several crude cybernetics smashed into it, causing a solid dent in the door.

Once through, they were met by several armsmen, asking questions about who they were and what they were doing here, but seeing their panic and their attention needed with the bulked door, the PCs were directed to their leader, if anyone were injured they might take a quick sidetrip to the medica that was just down the hall anyway.

In the medicae, they found another one of these dataslates, it contained a medical log for Lord Captain Tristan Mahvorn, documenting his injuries and that he was dying, so they stabilised him and put him in stasis untill they could find some way to heal his injures.

The PCs tended to some of their wounds and went on their way to talk to the leader, after scaring a few civilians first. When they met the leader, they saw that this was the very same navigator as in the video. He presented himself as Gary Carbona and started the long explanation of how the situation they currently are in and what they are doing now... after sending a few people out with various orders.