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Dark Heresy VOIP Campaign

Started by precinctomega, April 26, 2010, 10:17:53 AM

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Heroka Vendile

quadruple post!

I am busy Monday evening, once again. Sorry chaps.
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

MarcoSkoll

Well, I'm canal boating again.

So I can attend sessions, but it's convenient if I have advance warning one way or the other.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

I've just realised I failed to even check if anyone was on for the last two sessions.

Sorry if I messed anything up by not being there, I've been rather thrown by how patchwork things have been for the last while.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Heroka Vendile

It's not an issue dave, I've been busy the past 6 mondays in a row now!

Speaking of which, while my mondays should remain completely clear over the summer, it will become an frequent issue again come September, so I against raise the question of what peoples thoughts are of changing to a Sunday evening instead?
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

MarcoSkoll

Sundays are mostly alright for me - I'm occasionally away at full weekend Infinity events and doubtless would be on a train on the corresponding Sunday evening, but I don't have any regular commitments.

The only evening I presently have a commitment for is Tuesdays (and if we moved to another day, I might fill Mondays with a local wargames club instead).
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Heroka Vendile

shock horror, I have nothing on tonight, so if folks are around we can have a session! Joseph can you give Graham a reminder?
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

MarcoSkoll

Hello chaps. Can anyone tell me if the chances of a game tomorrow are good, as I have an invitation to a concert rigging in the evening I'd rather not turn down if nothing's happening "here".
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Heroka Vendile

sure thing dave, go to your concert, I've also been asked if I could lend a hand somewhere this evening as it happens
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

MarcoSkoll

Right, I tried a recruiting run on Facebook, with no luck. I may try further afield if no-one else is having any fortunes.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Van Helser

I'm thinking I'd like to get back on board. I get back to the country next week and will have a pretty open schedule until I find a job. What night are you meeting on currently?

Ruaridh

MarcoSkoll

Currently Mondays. Sundays might be a possibility though; the move had been discussed, and while I think it was Graham who had an issue, we haven't seen him (or an explanation) for a few weeks.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Heroka Vendile

that said there won't be a session as such this coming Monday as I am away on camp, but if you're both around I imagine dave can fill you in on the adventure so far.
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

Van Helser

Moving forward, Sundays probably would be the easiest. In the short term, Mondays will be okay, though I'm not back in the UK until the 23rd, and Monday 28th is right out as it's my wife's birthday! I'll work out a time once I'm back in blighty.

Ruaridh

MarcoSkoll

Given there's the adventure I ran that needs covering too, I think I'll do at least that one as a text summary here - I'm more likely to provide something intelligible if I've proof-read it first (rather than just trying to summarise my completely disordered notes on the fly).
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

A not-hugely-short summary of the Maedai Political Crisis:

We had initially been told we were heading for Levongard (for Euan's plot), but I brought Interrogator Regin (aka "Gala") back from a one-off I'd originally run to fill in a free session and had her hijack things by diverting the team's transit so they could be put to work for a political crisis brewing on Maedai.

Lord Governor Julius Braggand's health was giving up at the age of 267, and de facto control had been passed to his son, Marius, and nephew, Livius.
Unfortunately, through a mix of arrogance, incompetence and the machinations of the other noble families (the Harren and DeLanka familes) vying for the governorship, things were starting to come apart at the seams.

So we're transferred to Maedai on a transport called the Divine Resolution. The shuttle ride in introduces the characters to "The Maedan High Spire" - an orbital station (and anchor for one of the planet's orbital elevators) that serves as a hugely ostentatious demonstration of the planet's ship building prowess.
From a distance, it vaguely resembles a cut gem implanted into golden jewellery - and that's fairly true, with huge diamond panes held together by a lattice of gilded struts serving as an indescribably expensive window to the stars for the Maedan elite. The interior is much the same - the air is completely free of the taint of machine oils and there is a unique standard (at least on the upper levels) for "poverty" where even the street musicians are finely dressed.

Just to make everything more complex though, as the characters pass a news-cryer loudly lectures the passing crowds on the kidnapping of the Governor's daughter, Aeliana, during her duties on the planet below.

The party is split down the middle (a deliberate choice to let people attend on different days), with Overseer (Katia) Bayev, Alyx, Sir William, Pelagius Turlough (Koval's new Adept) and Ernst being left on the high Spire to sort through the politics and Gala, Doyle Grizbain (Quickdraw's ratling scum), Guilliman and Novus (in the hands of Koval) heading down to the planet to recover the daughter.

~~~~~

The Spire team fairly quickly ascertain that it's approaching the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension (or, at least the date it's celebrated locally), and decide that the celebrations (featuring all the levels of Spire society) make for a good cover to get themselves closer in.
They concoct Alyx a cover identity as Alastriona Shura Lehti, a noblewoman from New Gemini with a taste for big game hunting (with her bodyguard, personal preacher and valet), and approach one of the Spire's high fashion designers, Agapetus Gernot, to commission an expensive dress.

~~~~~

The ground team at a similar time crash the Arbites investigation of the kidnapping site, headed by Judge Andreon Lucax, making much more blatant use of their Inquisitorial authority.

The attack was on a convoy of three Rhinos as they travelled through a hab district. There's little remaining evidence of the attackers (with only Palace Guard corpses at the site), but they discover through various investigation and some psychic voodoo that there's a missing corpse - the driver of the rear Rhino ("Stigr Hughan") was a mole, and is (now) completely missing from the Palace's own records.

They investigate the scene for a while longer, picking up some notes from the lead Judge about anti-governmental factions (the other noble families, a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the Administratum, as well as the "Dark Sun" terrorist group) and local mercenary contractors (Cadence Company, Cataphractan Defence and Dragan Unit).

Novus then contaminates the scene with blood rain shortly before they're attacked by a group in Arbites uniforms, one of whom they take alive enough to psychically interrogate. He's very mentally bleary, but they manage to figure out that he was a member of Cadence Company, under contract to "Hjensen Fabrication".

While the Dark Sun cult has frequent links with arms manufacturers like Hjensen, they instead choose to go straight to Cadence Company, and attempt to take out a contract to have Judge Lucax kidnapped.

~~~~~

At a similar time, the Spire team go about researching the histories of the various local families, as well as the word on the street.
While Julius is popular with the people, Marius (the son) is considered violently arrogant, Livius (the nephew) is considered a well-meaning incompetent, the Harrens are money centric and the DeLankas are largely taken to be self-centred tossers (to the point their dethroning is usually due to wild civic unrest). There's a lot of high level back-stabbing (some of it literal) between the families.

~~~~~

Back on the planet, the ground team somehow manage to get their contract accepted, and return to their rented accommodation. Fortunately, they bother to stay up on watch, because a very large force of well armed and armoured troopers turns up in the night.
They inflict a few casualties, but they realise they're wildly outnumbered, so Novus blows up the building and they escape into the undercity.

There's a bit of an altercation with some abhumans, but they eventually make their way out a safe distance away, have a bad night's sleep in an alleyway, and recontact the Judge (who has not been kidnapped).

This leads them to be pretty suspect of Cadence Company, so they make demands to meet the planet's Lord Marshal, and fairly soon after do - while grumpy to have been disturbed during major preparations for feast days, he grants them a pretty high level of support in pursuing Cadence.

Deciding a direct assault on a major mercenary company is out of the question, they're directed to Judge Tatiana Celeste, part of a more covert division of the local Arbites, and between they make plans for infiltrating Cadence Company's headquarters to access their cogitators to see if they have any information on the kidnapped Duchess.

~~~~~

On the spire, they meet with Gernot again to confirm designs (and Alyx's measurements) and sort everything out for the dress to be manufactured (on some very complex and ancient machines scattered around the workshop) over the next few days. It's agreed that the final design will include armoured fabrics.

They then proceed to the first feast of the Ascension. Held directly in the Governor's grounds (even with the growing security risks, tradition demands it), this serves the "lower" classes of the High Spire.
We get fairly suspicious about the security arrangements, then Livius (the Nephew) appears on one of the balconies to make a speech... and gets hit in the shoulder by a sniper on a nearby roof.

This causes instant and total panic in the crowd (rolling something like 95 on their WP test). People are being crushed, everyone is screaming... and then Ernst happens.
I forget exactly what I rolled on his Fellowship test, but I wouldn't have been surprised if for just a brief second the entire mob had seen a vast figure in golden armour standing behind him...

This frees up Alyx to chase after the sniper and Pelagius and Sir William to rush for the (rented) grav-sedan. Alyx does a fair job at keeping up with the sniper until he misses a jump and Sir William can get out of the sedan to apprehend him.

Of course, the regular Arbites turn up fairly fast. Fortunately, the cover identities Pelagius and Bayev ran up are robust enough that they believe them, and Sir William (supposedly being an Arbitrator reassigned as Lady Lehti's bodyguard) is invited to assist with the interrogation.

That turns up that our sniper too is working with Cadence Company...

~~~~~

... where, down below, the ground team are starting to break in, disguised as tech-adepts (and Doyle as some form of vat grown minion).
They get as far as the cogitators before they trigger an alert by smashing up the surveillance down there. They manage to transfer a large amount of data before Novus messes up his psychic tests a couple of times in a row and ends up body-swapping with both Gala and the one of the mercs sent to deal with the alert (who he then blows up with his own grenades).

All hell generally starts breaking loose. Doyle takes the air vents to see if he can outmanoeuvre the guards, but the non-Ratling individuals need to take the less surreptitious routes (and lots of shooting commences).

Fortunately, Doyle finds the main control room and inflicts enough damage there to make the attempts to find the party a lot less co-ordinated. (And ends up completely by fluke taking out the elite guard squad. If I recall, he righteous furied one, whose grenades and ammo all go up simultaneously).

Still, a bad move by Novus during the escape puts him out of commission, and he has to be hauled the rest of the way to the roof, where the Arbites drop in via land speeder and whisk them all away.

~~~~~

Above, the Spire Team have been contacted by Livius (the Nephew), who summons them to the Gubernatorial palace.

They're directed to a drawing room, where Julius (the Governor) happens to briefly stumble in while they're waiting, looking for brandy (and initially mistakes Alyx for someone else).
They do then meet Livius (whose intelligence isn't all that much above the level of "Prince George" from Blackadder the Third); injured and increasingly desperate, he's heard about the off-worlders via an Arbites report, and figures they're probably less likely to be a mole than anyone local, and uses his limited grasp of authority and inter-nobility politics to try get the PCs to check things out.

Naturally, the offer to go snooping around in the Palace Guard's records is not turned down, and Pelagius and Sir William have several hours snooping around in the archives.

They confirm the earlier mentioned tampering, and between this and several discussions with the Colonel of the Guard, determine that the security for both the convoy and the feast had been sabotaged (with deliberate weaknesses and under-competent members of the guard assigned  to the various jobs.

There's also a large budget hole where ex-members of the Guard were still on pay-roll, leading to about 16,500 Thrones being filtered off. They trace most of this back to one scribe, Nor Felinus, who confidently justifies his actions as having been correctly passed down the chain of command (or so it seemed/he claims).

Amongst this all, they do lots of beefing up of the security for the main ball (a much more exclusive ceremony than the earlier feast, open only to the highest rungs of society, including the other major noble families) a few days later.

~~~~~

The ground team...well, Doyle uses the evening to try romancing Gala - and apparently doesn't do a bad job of using the Arbites canteen to cook dinner or being a charming gentleman.

Over the next few days, they decrypted enough of the stolen data to be pretty sure Cadence Company know where the Princess is. They miss the incomplete co-ordinates in the decryption, but instead manage to get enough clues by breaking into Cadence Company's vox transmissions, and track it down to a location in the undercity.

They launch something of a two-pronged assault, the Arbites serving as an above ground distraction, and the PCs (joined by an Arbites, Koenig Mallens, instead of Novus) go in via the undercity. They get into an initially rather easy fire-fight with the mercs there, but it very quickly ramps up - as they later realise, the mercs had started out using blank ammunition, looking to fake a firefight (and had been caught off guard by actual live fire being traded).

However, they find the Duchess, slightly surprised at the nature of her rescue, and high-tail it above ground, pursued by several considerably better armed mercs.

They eventually emerge on about the second or third floor of a building, overlooking a dockside. Gala takes the option of using her size and concealed bionics to throw both Doyle and the Duchess from  the building to the relatively safer quay.

Those still stuck on the upper floors are however fortunate, because they'd sent the Arbites above ground, a speeder patrolling the perimeter turns up. This one however has heavy weapons - the pursuing mercs have a baaaaddd day.

~~~~~

At a similar time, the Spire team are making final preparations for the grand ball, checking against various avenues of attack - guests are invitation only, making sure guards are intelligently deployed against any intruders, ensuring the flack cannons on the perimeter are active against aerial intrusion, and being given the low-down on the various poison snoopers used to ensure that the food cannot be poisoned.

They've picked up Alyx's fancy new dress, and take to the ball. They're treated to more examples of Marius' intolerance and Livius' incompetence along the way, and meet various guests.
Another one of the guests mistakes Alyx for someone else... then we discover who she's been mistaken for, because I decide to introduce Kyrillos and Diamanto Leveque (older brother and sister, twins) to the party. As you can imagine, Alyx disappears very fast.

Anyway, shortly after, both Marius and Livius are poisoned. With some luck, and the assistance of the Governor's personal Hospitaller, both are stabilised, but the PCs have to go off and find out how it happened.

While investigating the kitchens and questioning the staff, Pelagius makes the deduction that the poison snoopers may not detect exotic allergies, and eventually works out (after consulting aid of Sister Berenice) that the Braggand family have a severe reaction to a spice called Deujakkan.

It's not common knowledge, so between the list of people who'd know and questioning down the scribe who ordered it, the prime suspect ends up being Lord  Governor Julius Braggand himself.

They confront him in his personal chambers (where Alyx catches up with them again). He's fairly calm about  their arrival (although he's consuming large quantities of brandy, it's not for his nerves), even after having deduced them as agents of the Inquisition.
He's open to questioning, and largely sets out the whole thing as in the interests of his people.

As he's dying, he'll soon be succeeded - and his son is violently arrogant, making him both unfit to rule and an awful continuation of the family line.
His nephew, while technically not directly in the line of succession, was enough in the way (particularly with his current status as Regent) that taking him out of the picture would ensure minimal complications. (And it would have been suspicious if he hadn't been a target).

His daughter Aeliana, on the other hand, was his choice of successor, much more competent and level-headed. As a result, he had several of the palace scribes divert a large quantity of funds with which to stage a kidnapping to have her safely "out of the way" until an equally staged rescue. Blame the whole thing on Dark Sun cultists, done.

His hopes were removing his son from the equation would further the future of his family and the planet.

They don't get a whole lot more out of him than that though, as they discover that he's poisoned his own brandy.

A big regrouping occurs (although Alyx disappears for a while before they leave the palace. The others suspect it has something to do with her brother and sister), and they discuss the various options for governorship - Marius, Aeliana, the Harren family, the DeLanka family or indeed something else.

They vote against trying to plant the other families, but decide Marius has to go.
They cook up a chemical agent that'll retrigger the allergic reaction in Marius, and under the cover of attempting to assist his recovery, manage to spin a line to Sister Berenice that lets them inject him with it while he's in the palace medical wing.

It functions as planned, removing him from the equation (and somehow managing to convince Berenice that it was a failed attempt at healing him).
Shortly afterwards, the Arbites return Aeliana to the Palace, now faced with becoming the new Lady Governor of Maedai.

While the PCs have no further time before their transit to Levongard, Gala stays behind to try and further stabilise the situation. (And, at some point, I'll update people on how it's going).


And that's it up as far as our transit to Levongard, which I'll expand upon at another time.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles