A girl and her cyborg-that-nature-never-intended-Holiad's Autumn conclave 2011

[Holiad]

Hello, here's my own report on the autumn conclave. Apologies to my opponents that both they and their characters have ended up nameless-this is entirely due to my own failure to take due note of such details during the game.

2011 Autumn conclave write-up-

Since the event was themed around the emergance of an alleged saint, I decided to use my ecclesiarchy character, Ynserrai Glydd, as my main character, aligned with the investigation faction. Since her role in the ecclesiarchy is to investigate the more extreme cults within the imperium and decide which of them are actually heretical, as opposed to unorthodox, it would be important to her to be sure early on whether a saint was genuine. She would be accompanied by her bodyguard, skitarii operative Zen "Bunny-killer" nine-gamma-four-zero, with the Crusade of the Seekers(pretty much redemptionists with less masks and flamers and more swords) providing enthusiastic, if not quite reliable, cannon-fodder.

GAME ONE-

For this scenario, Ynserrai was due to meet a battle sister to establish her worthiness to see the saint, backed up by Zen and Brother-Crusader Jops, a seeker with two chainswords. Also seeking to establish his worthiness was inquisitor Crace, accompanied by an astropath and a guardsman.

The early game started with Jops running ahead, prompting Ynserrai to tell him to wait. While complying, the sight of inquisitor Crace heretically hiding his face from the emperor behind a mask drew crys of outrage and a readying of his two chainswords. To his disappointment, Ynserrai clearly forbade any smiting without her permission, and he reluctantly complied, grumbling that Inquisitor Terwyn let him smite the infidels. However, hope blossomed as the battle sister hesitated to immediately declare the inquisitor's purity, taking extra time to consider, while Ynserrai easily won her over with her staff of ecclesiastical office and powerful persuasion skills.




Keen to avoid an unnecessary fight which would put his employer in danger, Zen restrained Jops in an armlock, prompting the battle sister to question the purity of Ynserrai's companions.


Lacking the sense to let his employer, who is a much better diplomat than him, sort things out, Jops broke free  and loudly proclaimed his purity, which through his poor leadership and a worse persuade roll ended with the battle sister aiming a boltgun at him. Just as Zen made an offer to leave him with the battle sister for "re-education" the inquisitor's astropath intervened, compelling Jops to take a swing at the battle sister with one chainsword, easily dodged. Capitalising on this turn of events, Crace drew his plasma pistol and opens fire on Zen, but luckily the shot was wide, and his digital laspistol made little impression. Zen and Ynserrai return fire, while Jops casts his chainswords aside and prostrates himself in penance, remarkably convincing the battle sister of his sincerity.


Mustering his psychic powers a second time, the astropath compels Zen to drop his shotgun, but in the process convinces Ynserrai, already suspiscous that Jops would strike a battle sister, that witchcraft is involved, and with another stunning persuade roll Jops both persuaded the battle sister in turn but gained leave to join the battle. As Zen, leaving his shotgun on the ground, charged at Crace with his implanted power knife, Crace dodged away and retired in good order, the use of psychic powers and an unexpected streak of persuasiveness from Jops turning the battle sister in Ynserrai's favour.



So, a good start, but that makes two negotiations Jops has nearly ruined by going beserk at the sight of a masked inquisitor. Still, it keeps things interesting, and his unintentional sabotage has yet to actually succeed-in this case, he even salvaged things himself, displaying an undocumented talent for diplomacy. Perhaps the battle sister is a fan of westerns, and noticed his uncanny resemblance to Wyatt Earp.

GAME 2-

Having secured the good graces of the local ecclesiarchy, Ynserrai took Zen hunting through the ruins of an old chaos cult, hoping to find clues as to whether some dark power still lurked in the abandoned site, and might be influencing the corporal. After his poor behaviour last game, Jops was substituted by Brother-crusader Caynen Fedeur. An inquisitor was also inestigating the dark site, and a sinister figure crept through the shadows surrounded by spiders.

Having checked the area with his bioscanner and found it clear of life-signs, Zen advanced confidently through a forest with Ynserrai by his side, while Caynen broke off to their right planning to search a large building for clues, or at least something to smite.

The inquisitor reached the central ruins first, and spotting the unfortunate corpse of a previous investigator, rifles through his pockets, finding several data slates. Turning to leave, he found himself detained by a cold hand round his ankle, but the zombified investigator proved little obstacle, and the inquisitor broke free and shot it several times, aided by his two henchmen.

While most of the injuries had little effect, a headshot sent the zombie sprawling to the other side of the ruins, just in time to be spotted by Ynserrai and Zen. Observing the ineffectiveness of small arms fire, Zen draws his inferno pistol and levels it on the ruins, but having rarely used the weapon his aim was off, one shot going wide and the second merely vaporising an arm. With both zombie and rival investigators busy, the inquisitor withdrew, and Caynen's investigation of the buildings yielded only a suspisciously aggressive spider, quickly if somewhat excessively obliterated by his ornate and holy bolt pistol. Just as Ynserrai and Zen finally had the zombie on the ground with an inferno pistol aimed at its head...

... a really big spider emerged from the shadows, webbing Ynserrai and charging Zen. Calmly, Zen blocked the massive pincers with his storm shield and sliced off one of the legs, while Ynserrai clubbed the remaining limbs off the zombie, but somehow failed to deliver a killing blow.

At this point, the game was called, on the assumption that my characters would eventually kill the spider and find the false information left by its master, the real information having already been taken. A frustrating game in a couple of ways, with another warband getting away with the objective before I really got  chance to do anything about it and my own characters spending far too long dispatching a lone zombie or investigating the wrong bit of the table. Still, the zombie losing its limbs one by one and still making a spirited attempt to bite my character's ankle was somewhat funny, and the wyrd beastmaster+spiders was an interesting warband.

GAME 3-

For the final game before the finale, Ynserrai had managed to pull some strings and get into the site of the corporal's resurrection to search for information, as indeed had two other inquisitors and their henchmen. We were limited to two characters for this scenario, and wanting Zen for the final game, I replaced him with brother Hospitallier RJ, the most heavily armed of the seekers. RJ and Ynserrai split up early on, with Ynserrai picking up a relic and heading towards a building, and RJ heading for a central pillar.

Spotting a distant figure, one of the inquisitors fires off a shot with her bolt pistol, hitting RJ in the chest and leaving him stunned for the full 3 rounds, unable to do anything but crawl into cover.


Luckily for RJ, his assailant in turn comes under fire from a guard, under strict orders to protect the site and unaware of the intruder's authority.

Seeing the guard circle around, she follows, followed in turn by her henchman. Meanwhile, inquisitor number two was quietly accumulating relics unmolested by any party, and Ynserrai reached a roof to find a second guard aiming a gun at her chest in challenge.

Doing her best to persuade the guard of her good intentions, she circled him slowly, hoping for a distraction, but nothing turned up and, ordered back down the stairs she had come from, she decided in favour of caution and withdrew with the one relic she'd managed to conceal, gunfire erupting on the other side of the building as guard number one, circling away from the first inquisitor, ran into the second, and gunned down his imperial guard henchman, who dropped 3 relics as he fell, before engaging the inquisitor himself in a fierce melee.

Recovering from being shot, the guardsman leapt heroically off the ledge to the aid of his master, but unfortunately missed the assailant and landed on his head, leading to further injury.

Finally recovering from his own injury, RJ spotted a figure walk past him and charged forward with a battle cry, but his target proved skilled enough to evade the sweeps of his power sword, as Ynserrai peered round a corner and, spotting two heavily wounded figures and an angry guard, quickly fled the site.


The game ended here, with Ynserrai and the henchman RJ was attempting to eviscerate each in possession of one relic, the other inquisitors henchman having accumulated an impressive three but having subsequently been seperated from them, and a sixth remaining undisturbed.

So, another frustrating game, and a reminder of why I don't like bolt weapons- two characters, and the fighter among them gets shot on turn 2 and spends the next five recovering, but by keeping a low profile I still managed to come away with a respectable result. It was looking like the inquisitor plus Guardsman would run away with it until near the end when they ran afoul of the guards, which to be honest were the genuine victors here, despite being outnumbered three to one.


GAME FOUR-FINALE

Counting up resources, two narrow/questionable victories and one definite defeat, combined with a lack of the required sets, put me quite low down the pecking order, and while other characters would be meeting the corporal straight away, my own would instead be attempting to commandeer a valkyrie in order to warn the corporal of an impending attack, competing with inquisitor Crace from scenario one, and an anarchist inquisitor. Limited once more to two characters, Zen was the obvious choice.


Naturally, the game started with all the characters running towards the valkyrie, and with good action rolls Ynserrai and Zen made it first, but Crace wasn't far behind, and had a plasma pistol drawn.

Quickly, Ynserrai boarded the valkyrie, reminding the inquisitor as she did so that he wouldn't wish to damage the precious transport. Unwilling to take chances faced with a plasma weapon, Zen opened fire on Crace as he backed up the boarding ramp behind Ynserrai. While shots, fired on the move, went wide except for a lone minor leg wound, the inquisitor's nerve faltered and he dived into cover behind his astropath, who was probably starting to question his loyalty.

The pause was enough, as Ynserrai quickly persuaded the pilot to cooperate with her and closed the doors, while Zen patiently reloaded his shotgun. Frustrated, Crace attempts to commandeer the valkyrie by telepathic message and ran over to the cockpit to speak to the pilot directly, while unnoticed by other factions, the third inquisitor, who happened to be an anarchist, was attaching a considerable quantity of explosives to the side of the valkyrie.

Detecting their presence via bioscanner, Zen alerted inquisitor Crace to their presence, hoping they'd be distracted by each other. While the two parties proved reluctant to engage in hostilities, the anarchist's dog, clearly bored with its master, raced round the cockpit to snap at inquisitor Crace's ankles.

With a quick "Hold on, maybe he's just trying to be friendly", the anarchist called his pet off, persuaded inquisitor Crace of his good intentions("Explosives? What explosives?") and offered to stay behind while everyone else flew off to speak with the saint.

Overlooking the suspiscious selflessness of the new arrival, Crace persuaded the valkyrie pilot, who was by now probably very confused and a little scared with so many people shouting at him, to open the doors. Zen, however, concerned for Ynserrai's safety and having quickly calculated the best way to get him to back off, responded by aiming his inferno pistol upwards towards the valkyrie's engines, and demanding that the inquisitor leave such a deadly weapon behind. Aggravated, inquisitor Crace responded by aiming his plasma pistol at the valkyrie's hapless pilot. Luckily, before things could come to a bad end, the anarchist inquisitor intervened, persuading Crace to back down. However, while Crace succeeded in persuading Ynserrai to let him aboard, Zen remained firm that he would *not* allow anyone carrying a plasma pistol to share a transport with Ynserrai. Again, it was the anarchist that prevented hideous violence, persuading his fellow inquisitor to entrust his precious and rare technological relic to him, promising to have it looked at by an expert and returned in better condition than ever. Falling for it, Crace hands over his weapon and joins Ynserrai and Zen aboard the valkyrie.

Throughout the negotiations, the astropath had been attempting to use his telepathy to intervene, but was foiled by a string of failed risky action rolls.

With all that over and, amazingly, nobody horribly shot, it was off to the main table to warn the corporal. Arriving to spot the attack already under way,

two inquisitors trying to drag an unwilling saint to safety,

and a tau emissary speaking very persuasively to anyone willing to listen,

Ynserrai commanded the valkyrie to land near the corporal, let everybody off, then take off and strafe the attackers, intending both to aid the corporal's escape/fight and to bless her weapons, which would hopefully reveal a chaos inflitrator. Unfortunately, just as the gunship lands,

a massive orbital laser cuts through the chaos forces towards the corporal, everybody starts running, and all the explosives strapped to the valkyrie go off. Alas, poor red-shirted pilot, a good and loyal soldier to the end. While Ynserrai and Zen, along with others, escape in the resulting chaos, by the time things settled it's unknown whether the Saint herself survived, got vapourised by the ion cannon, was hideously mutilated by chaotic forces, or even if she was abducted by aliens(did anyone check that water caste's suitcase?).

So, to sum up, we arrived too late to do anything and just in time to explode. A dramatic failure, then, just like the whole event-for all their dramatics, Ynserrai not only failed to gain any insight into whether the saint was genuine, but ended up also not knowing whether the saint was even still alive.
Nothing for it but to declare her a valid icon of imperial valour in her absence, take her bodyguard on a well earned vacation, and move on to her next investigation-a *particularly* thorough assessment of the Seekers, with a few extra questions for brother-crusader Jops.

Overall, I enjoyed the event, despite minor frustrations, and was pleased with the characters I took. Ynserrai and Zen work well as a couple, a physically weak main character was interesting, and the seekers continue to add an entertaining level of violence to games which may otherwise have been very boring and uneventful, and look cool in the process.

[Cortez]

Yeah your second game didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I should have made Inquisitor Zoran and his team deploy on one of the short table edges as well as your team or moved the ruins further away from his deployment edge. Oh well you live and learn. Hope the rest of the day was less frustrating.

[Holiad]

No worries, it's a hard issue to avoid in inquisitor, since the inherent variability of action rolls means that even characters with the same speed value often move at quite different paces-the same factor worked in my favour in the final game, where I reached the valkyrie first and was able to negotiate from a strong position. Just one of the quirks of the game.