Raiding the Data Tomb

[Alyster Wick]

You can find the scenario here: http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2553.msg34411#new

The quick and dirty version is this:
Lord Inquisitor Bolivar has been murdered, throwing the power structure of the Hadronian Conclave in upheaval. His top acolytes see this as an opportunity to seize power for themselves and a frantic battle has begun to succeed their master. While the elite fight over the grand prize, however, his lesser servants are left to make a quick throne in whatever manner they can. The result has been a huge boon in the black data market. You have gotten coordinates from one of Bolivar's old informants that allegedly point to a secret Data Tomb on the outskirts of Arcada's Russet Crown. Move quickly to download whatever intelligence you can before someone else beats you to it!

Here is the Data Tomb:


The warband of Inquisitor Dryden, including Operative Cixe and Investigator Mycroft:


And here is Magos Narcis along with Hunter Killer Yang and the mercenary Khal Doman:




Inquisitor Dryden entered the dark tomb. Without words he scaled the ladder in front of him to survey the area from the top of the squat building in front of him. Once on top he saw a data port right in front of him, imagine the luck!



Cixe and Mycroft scaled the stack of boxes to their right to get a view from the opposite platform.

Across the complex, Narcis barked orders over the static of his vox unit. "Yang, patrol the left catwalk, Doman with me!"

The Magos moved as far as the corner of the first building before he scanned the area with his surveyor's auspex. With a master's practiced skill, he divined the locations of every data port in the complex. The lipless scars around Narcis's teeth tightened in a perverse imitation of a smile beneath his helmet. Meanwhile HK Yang focused the lens on her eye across the complex and saw a figure in armor on a roof.



The Inquisitor saw the Hunter Killer across the complex. Quickly, he hacked into the dataport in front of him and ducked behind a steel drum for cover.

Seeing the man disappear, Yang stepped back and took a flying leap onto the platform across from her. She readied her rifle but didn't have time to aim. She didn't know who these intruders were, but she would be ready.

Doman saw the same shape scurry by from his vantage point below, along with a vacant dataport at the base of the building. The grizzled mercenary advanced in front of Narcis and growled, "there's someone on the roof..." He rushed forward and vaulted over the a fence to secure the dataport, but his footing was amiss and he fell straight on his face.



Cixe and Mycroft heard yelling and a crash behind them. The sniper scaled a nearby ladder and hacked into a nearby dataport before turning to scan the complex. Meanwhile Mycroft looked at his bioscanner and yelled to his comrades, "three targets, one across the catwalk and two at the base of the building.

Narcis moved up behind the mercenary. It sounded like a fight was brewing and he wanted to hack the nearest dataport and get out. With Khal Doman there to protect him what could go wrong...

It was a time for action. The Inquisitor would deal with these interlopers, and quickly. If anyone was going to secure Bolivar's data it would be a fellow Inquisitor. Rushing across the catwalk, Dryden took a great arcing swing, cleaving a great bloody swath across Yang's chest. The momentum of the swing sent the Hunter Killer tumbling backwards off the roof. The practiced eye of the Inquisitor could see she was taken out before the body even hit the ground.



Doman rolled to his side out from the view of the sniper he spotted on the stack across the way. He briefly considered how open this would leave the Magos, but he was sure Narcis could fend for himself. Meanwhile he saw Yang drop from the adjacent rooftop.

Fine by me, he thought with a smile, nothing wrong with a little violence...

With a smile on his lips Doman let lose two shots on high from his triplex pattern las rifle. The first shot aimed true and hit his target square in the back of the head. The second one burned a deep gouge in the catwalk, but the damage was done.



Across the complex Cixe saw a lasbolt rip into the back of his lord's skull. He couldn't see the person who fired the shot, but there was a ripe target...



Doman's features sagged visibly as he saw Narcis crumble to the ground in motionless pile. Keeping his head down, the merc dragged his employer into cover. At least he had taken out the big guy in the armor. With no targets in view and Narcis safe, he plugged the one dataslate Narcis had given him into the dataport and hit the copy sequence. Kahl stared blankly at the screen as a sequence of numbers flashed by, spelling out "error" in the glorious language of the machine, a language he did not speak. He growled at the thing and pocketed his empty dataslate.



While Cixe took out the Magos, Mycroft circled towards Dryden's last location. He saw the Inquisitor lying face down on the rooftop and leaped from the catwalk to attend to his master. The Investigator arrived just in time to see Dryden shake the fog from his head. The Inquisitor glanced down to see what looked like a dying tech priest and some kind of augmented warrior. His head split and his eyes remained blurry, but the emperor's will carried him forward.

Dryden rolled off the rooftop and dropped to the ground, rushing over to a large metal barrel and drawing his pistol.

Doman saw the armored figure get up as though the shot to his head was nothing, and now a figure in a trench coat moved up the catwalk towards him.

"Don't move," he yelled, drawing the plasma pistol from his master's holster and aiming it at the trench coated man. "Let me walk out of here with the Magos and we can call it even."

Mycroft leveled his pistol and advanced.

"Toss us you're data and we'll accept," he said, seeing a nod of agreement from Dryden.

"Sure," said Kahl, winking at Mycroft and tossing him the blank dataslate. "Be seeing you."



[/story]

Wow, it was a spectacular failure for me as Narcis. Two of my characters taken out in a single shot! And what's more, the triplex shot to Dryden's head only took him out for a single turn! The dice god's were not with me as I was forced to leave Yang on the field and escaped with no data points (compared to my opponent's . At the very least I got the pleasure of throwing a blank dataslate to them (though it isn't as if I had any points to give anyway).

All in all it was a great first game for my friend and he's definitely down to play again, so I count the whole thing a success. He was hooked when his first attack sent my Hunter Killer flying off the roof with a power sword to the chest. All in all it was well played on all sides and I got to have Doman wink at Mycroft (they have a history of foul run ins across two or three games) so I was happy, even in defeat.

[Dullmohawk]

Whew, lucky for some! For others? Not so much.
A really great battle report, with some very nicely themed terrain and a lovely write-up. I've been following the meta-thread in the rules section and was looking forward to see how your two-player scenario would turn out. Might I suggest, for future games, that you keep the visibility down to 20 yards or so, due to the dim and musty atmosphere of the data tomb? It sort of prevents missions like these turning into a gun fight too soon, and helps players do a little sneaking around first. Just a suggestion.
I'm looking forward to see where you go from here! A rescue mission, I presume?  also, I'm sure that the hallowed organization of the Adeptus Mechanicus won't stand for the offense! After all, data is sacred and so should be stored in a holy place, under the right rites and rituals of the Machine God.

[MarcoSkoll]

Glad to hear it was a success! Getting people interested is one of the best prizes you can ask for out of this game.

And just to say it again, the table all looks very swish - just goes to show how much can be done with old packaging.

Might I suggest, for future games, that you keep the visibility down to 20 yards or so, due to the dim and musty atmosphere of the data tomb? It sort of prevents missions like these turning into a gun fight too soon, and helps players do a little sneaking around first. Just a suggestion.

For my thoughts, it's important to note that the game isn't very interesting when characters have no idea anyone's there and aren't interacting in anyway.
This is why I start most games with 3+ action rolls, at least until things actually kick off. It gets the game to its meat faster, rather than frittering away time on the characters having it easy.

Awareness/shooting penalties at longer ranges can do good things if gunfights need tempering (more than terrain already is, anyway), but I wouldn't normally recommend a hard limit to LoS.

[Aurelius]

Wow that was an amazing read, your terrain and minis have come together so well. I want to do a similar thing - I have people interested in playing Inquisitor, but not in 54mm, so will need to supply the lot!

[Alyster Wick]

I want to do a similar thing - I have people interested in playing Inquisitor, but not in 54mm, so will need to supply the lot!

It's a great motivator, but can make things a bit difficult. My suggestion would be that you get your new recruits into the game enough beforehand that they really take ownership over tweaking their character stats and equipment. Things can move a bit slowly when you're a one stop shop for absolutely everything. Also, get comfortable fudging some rules for the sake of moving the game forward. And on that note...

Might I suggest, for future games, that you keep the visibility down to 20 yards or so, due to the dim and musty atmosphere of the data tomb? It sort of prevents missions like these turning into a gun fight too soon, and helps players do a little sneaking around first. Just a suggestion.

Initially I forgot the sight rules and made a declaration that, "It's dark, distances count double in terms of sight." Forgetting that it's a simple LOS rule, I had us rolling the first couple turns, halving what we passed the I test by to figure out how far we could see. I very quickly realized this resulted in players not being able to see anything at all, so I cracked open the rulebook and saw the LOS rule. At that point two characters (Dryden and Yang) had spotted each other under the old rules, so the LOS ruling caused things to accelerate at a reasonable pace. In the end I'll go with Marco's sentiments, it's more interesting when characters are interacting. The trouble is to get players that see the contest as more than a shootout.

The critical moment in the game was when Dryden decided to rush Yang rather than seek a diplomatic solution (which the other player realized a couple turns on), but the game was dramatic and fun so neither of us cared. Plus it wasn't totally inappropriate on Dryden's part.

Regardless, there were a series of lucky/unlucky roles. Yang and Narcis both succumbed to system shock after a single hit and I don't know that I've ever seen someone weather two levels of damage to the head the way Dryden did. Had Narcis been an inch to the right he would have been out of sight from the sniper and (with his superior SG) it's totally feasible that he could have hacked the dataport next to him for enough points to win the game, so it was much closer than it may have seemed.

I'm looking forward to see where you go from here! A rescue mission, I presume?  also, I'm sure that the hallowed organization of the Adeptus Mechanicus won't stand for the offense! After all, data is sacred and so should be stored in a holy place, under the right rites and rituals of the Machine God.

So my goal is to get 3-4 more players for the campaign and run an identical scenario with all of them. Plot-wise, the death of Bolivar opens up a number of possible plot threads and whoever gathers the most data (ends with the most data points) will get to decide which plot thread to follow. It also gives players a chance to make alliances/enemies in a lower-stakes situation.

All that said, something will have to be done about Yang...

And just to say it again, the table all looks very swish - just goes to show how much can be done with old packaging.

In all seriousness, while I do appreciate the detail provided by the AdMech terrain bits, most of that table could be put together for under $50, easily. The paint might be the most expensive piece (and an $8 bottle of acrylic paint will go a very, VERY long way). Lots of the main components I got "free" as they started their life as packing material (as you so aptly point out).