Savage Eberron: Half-Giants

My infrequent Savage Eberron game borrows the character generation rules outlined here, which give starting heroes the equivalent of two free Edges. This makes them more powerful than standard Savage Worlds characters, but I think that's in keeping with the tone of the setting. With that said, I present a new race, the half-giant.

Half-Giant

• Strong: Half-giants are not as strong as their brobdinagian forebears, but are nonetheless mightier than most other humanoids. Half-giants begin with a d6 in Strength.

• Tough: With increased strength comes increased durability. Half-giants have thick leathery skin and a high pain threshold, reflected in a starting Vigour of d6.
• Big: Half-giants stand somewhere between seven and eight feet in height, and can be almost as broad. They start with a +1 to Size.
• Low Light Vision: A half-giant retains their ancestors' ability to see in darkened conditions. Half-giants ignore penalties for Dim and Dark lighting.
• Outsider: The giants of Xen'drik are considered primitive savages, the pathetic remnants of a once-proud empire, and their half-breed offspring are often seen as little better. Half-giants subtract 2 from their Charisma when around the more "civilised" races.
• Clumsy: Half-giants are big and strong, but they have little in the way of natural grace. Each Agility increase during character generation requires an expenditure of two points rather than one.

Half-giants were introduced to Eberron in Secrets of Xen'drik, which lifted the mechanics straight from the Expanded Psionics Handbook. This is in keeping with the stated design goal of the setting that "if it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron", but since the half-giant in the EPH is itself lifted wholesale from the Dark Sun setting, complete with psionic abilities and a partial immunity to the desert heat, it's a bit of an odd fit. In all fairness, the designers make an attempt to fit the race into the setting, positioning them as an engineered species, constructed by the Inspired from the giants of Xen'drik, then returned there to act as heavy labour in the Inspired's projects on the continent. Even so, it's a bit of a glaring fudge if you ask me, so I've decided to go for something much simpler and have them be the result of unions between humanoids and the native giants of Xen'drik.

Urban Arcana

I played a lot of Shadowrun in my teens, and most of our games were set in a futuristic Seattle, so I'm no stranger to urban role-playing games. I've never played in an urban setting in a fantasy game, though, and that's an itch I'd like to scratch one day, perhaps by visiting one of the following fine destinations:

Port Blacksand: Long before Freeport, there was the City of Thieves. After the ancient coastal city of Carsepolis was destroyed in the wars against Chaos, it was abandoned for decades, until pirates and thieves started taking refuge in the ruins, and things developed -- some might say worsened -- from there. The settlement passed through many hands over the centuries, until a bold pirate named Azzur sailed into port, conquered the city and installed himself as ruler. Now Blacksand is a chaotic place, with a single ruler but untold numbers of factions, great and small, vying for power. It is ostensibly a civilised human settlement, but ogres and trolls wander the streets wearing the uniform of the city watch. Lord Azzur himself is rarely seen, and may no longer even be in charge. A grizzled hermit lives in a shack under one of the city's bridges, a man claimed by some to be one of the world's most powerful mages, but if so, why is he there? And below the busy, grubby streets of Blacksand lie the ruined, haunted streets of Old Carsepolis, complete with forgotten temples to strange gods of the sea...

Honourable mention goes to that other great city of the Fighting Fantasy setting, Kharé. A Lankhmar-esque place that is easy to enter, but difficult to leave, Kharé may not be a city at all, but rather a prison in disguise.

Irilian: Published in White Dwarf #42 to #47 -- before it became a miniatures catalogue, etc, etc -- as an ambitious and elaborate attempt to map and detail a complete fantasy city, something they would later try again with Marienburg for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. What makes Irilian interesting is that it is no list of locations and NPCs, an approach which could quickly become dry and dull. Rather it is presented as a small campaign, with the players being introduced to various parts of the city as they progress through a series of linked adventures, so one scenario might occur in the merchant district, while the next would happen in and around the temple district, and so on. It's a fascinating and effective approach, the city as a sandbox, and one which makes it easier to absorb the sheer volume of information presented in thirty-ish pages of the Dwarf's then-characteristic 6pt text. My only criticism is the insistence on inventing a local language for the city that is the same as English, just with annoying alternative spellings -- "Commandere Aef Hors" for the city's cavalry leader -- that will have the GM reaching for the glossary every five minutes during the game.

Sigil: The ultimate port city, sitting as it does at the heart of the multiverse. The interesting thing about Planescape for me is not the dimension-hopping crossover aspect, as I tend to think that Spelljammer does this in a more evocative manner. Rather the point of interest is the central hub of Sigil itself, a place literally at the crossroads of everything. I see no reason to jump about the many planes of the D&D cosmology when there's such a rich, thriving and unpredictable setting right there in what could so easily be discarded as a mere base of operations. One gets the feeling that anything could happen in Blacksand, but in Sigil the safeties are off, and "anything could happen" takes on a whole new meaning in a city in which gangs of street thugs go to war with each other over matters of epistemology and metaphysics.

Those are my favourites. What about yours?

What's On Your Game Table?

Al asks, I answer.

Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition and Eberron Campaign Setting (3.5e version), because I'm putting the final touches to a Savage Eberron game I'm hoping to run this winter, the follow-up to a one-shot I ran earlier this year.

B2: The Keep on the Borderlands, because I've never read it, and I feel I probably should. I haven't had time to read it in the couple of months since I bought it, but I live in hope.

Aside from various sketches in various degrees of completion for Fight On! -- tenth issue out now, by the way -- that's the lot. Since most of my gaming stuff is in storage in another town, my gaming table -- which is a couple of shelves and a pile on the edge of the sofa, really -- isn't exactly groaning under the weight of stuff.

Kingmaker: DING!

Yesterday's Pathfinder game saw the party members getting to sixth level, after a rather cynical -- on our part -- bit of wandering about the map, fishing for experience points. A common criticism of Pathfinder's rival D&D4 is that its mechanics make it feel like a video game, but I think it's fair to say that our tactics last night were more than a little inspired by the grinding of many a computerised rpg. Which is not to say it wasn't fun!

Last week, the party investigated a series of ruined elven towers deep in the woods in the western part of our realm, but we ran out of time before we could tackle the large central tower. Picking up from where we left off, the party entered the building and discovered a rather obvious floor trap, which the changeling rogue Olban disarmed with ease, allowing the group to ascend the stairs to the upper level.

There things started to get strange, as the party entered what seemed to be a wooded glade under a sky lit by alien stars, and yet it was still a room within a tower, with windows looking out onto the courtyard in which the party had fought the quickling not a few minutes before. As if this was not disorienting enough, the room/clearing also contained a beautiful elven woman -- a baobhan sith -- who began a seductive dance as the party approached.

Alas for her, the only target she managed to entrance was the party's faithful warhound Cujo, and while the poor beast panted happily for her attention the rest of the team moved in for the kill. Sensing danger, the maiden unleashed an entangle spell, which was quite successful in slowing down the majority of the party, but only delayed the inevitable. A short scuffle later, and the strange thing was killed, fading away into nothingness as it died, and restoring the room to normal.

Having come out of the experience with fewer bumps and bruises than expected, the party decided to take the opportunity to explore the surrounding area, having been prevented from doing so beforehand by matters of state. Along the way a trio of grizzly bears were discovered, but the elven druid Cassie used her secret knowledge to calm the creatures, and the party managed to pass without a fight. Later, the heroes came across the lair of some kind of huge burrowing animal and were almost caught out as the occupants -- some kind of chthonic variant of the ankylosaurus -- returned home from an afternoon's foraging. These beasts managed to split the party but were unable to take advantage of the situation, and were brought down, albeit not with ease. Despite having rested, the ongoing fighting and exploration was taking its toll on the party.

The group decided to make one last push before heading back home, and ran into a pair of shambling plant things, each a mass of mud, vegetable matter and animated roots. The tengu monk Wu Ya found his effectiveness diminished as the extra little kick -- no pun intended -- gained from his amulet of shocking fists seemed to heal the creatures so he was forced to resort to basic attacks.

(Stuart has commented on Wu Ya's increased damage output of late, but I think it's easy to forget how much of it comes from enhancements. The amulet gives the monk an extra 1d6 damage per hit, but stripped of that, he was only doing 1d8+3 with each attack, and the plant-things weren't vulnerable to his stunning fist ability either.

On a more positive note, this week Stuart's character Artemisia dragged herself out of her low damage slump of the past few sessions. It's a recurring joke that Stuart does better when someone else rolls his dice for him -- his son exemplifies this best, rolling strings of 20's while Stuart himself barely rolls above a 4 when he picks up the dice -- and it proved to be the case this session, as he was absent this week, but his character was more potent in combat than she has been when he's been driving.)

Perhaps sensing weakness, one of the plant creatures grabbed the monk and began crushing him to death -- 42 hit points to 12 in one round! -- but all the while Artemisia the barbarian was hacking away with her greatsword and Olban was darting back and forth, stabbing away with his twin rapiers, and the creature did not live long enough to crush poor Wu Ya. As it was, the barbarian's warhorse dealt the final blow, crushing the thing to so much mulch beneath its mighty hooves. Battered and bleeding, the party decided to head home, but each of them felt stronger and wiser from the experience.

Level six! There was a bit of grumbling about this at the table, to the effect that sixth level holds little of interest for the other classes. The monk, however, seems to have something funky going on at each level -- Rick observed that the reason that Pathfinder monks don't get easy access to the game's prestige classes may be because the monk is already a prestige class -- so I have no complaints. It's a long haul to the next level though, as we've got to earn around 12,000xp. Each!

Doxy #1

Imagining D&D

This post over at Grognardia seems to have spawned a meme, as a number of gaming bloggers have posted their responses. Here's mine.

This is the cover image that, more than any other, makes me think of Dungeons & Dragons:

This image was plastered over the comics of my youth, so before I even had the slightest idea of what a roleplaying game was, I was aware of D&D. As such, this image has a lot of nostalgic pull for me, although not enough to make me pick up the the new edition of D&D4 masquerading under this image.

Still, even this isn't the image that defines D&D for me. That image isn't a cover at all, and it's arguable if it's even an image as such:

To this day, I have a preference for landscape character sheets in D&D, purely because of this one document.

Return to the Campaigns of Elemental Evil

Not counting the Savage Eberron one-shot I ran back in the summer, it's been a while since I sat behind the GM screen, and even though I'm enjoying playing in a regular game, I've started to get that itch. I want to run Savage Eberron again at some point, perhaps some kind of loose sequel to the earlier game, so I'm throwing together some ideas for that, but most of my thinking of late has been on two possibilities: a continuation of my Rogue Trader campaign, and a return to Call of Cthulhu. The latter would be something brand new, not connected to my previous effort, and I'm thinking about a short - three or four episode - and self-contained site-based campaign, either set in the modern day or the gaslight period, and using some ideas I've pinched from a couple of indie games. I may end up running neither, or even both. We shall see.

My D&D

I have no plans to run any D&D any time soon, but if I did, there are some tweaks I think I'd include, most of which would alleviate the problems I have with the original game.

One of the things which struck me most about Dragonlance: Fifth Age was the abstract experience system. Instead of totting up points, a player would get a single "Quests" statistic, which would increase by one with every adventure completed; Quests also determined a player's hand size, and since the game had a card-based resolution mechanic, the more experienced a character, the more options they'd have when attempting tasks. The grey area, of course, is in defining an adventure, but that's easy enough to figure out. I'd use something similar in my D&D, which would alleviate a lot of my pedantic gripes with the old system.

I'd use JB's alternate combat system, not because I have any real problems with the existing mechanic, but simply because I like the ideas behind JB's streamlined approach. I'd tweak it to use ascending armour class, because I've never understood the descending type.

I would also borrow the thief skill mechanic from James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg because it's neat and clever, and not a million miles away from my own thoughts on the matter. I'd probably also use his "only fighters get better at fighting" rule, although I haven't given much thought to how that would gibe with the above combat system.

I quite like the way that Pathinder clerics heal and turn undead using the same power, so I'd use something similar, although I'd consider simplifying it a little. I might also borrow an idea from the Final Fantasy games and have any healing magic cause damage to undead creatures.

There are probably some other minor bits I'd fiddle with (I like the elegance of Swords and Wizardry's single saving throw), but those would be the major rules changes I'd make for my D&D. Would it still be D&D? Well, that's a question for another day.

Ahead of the Game

I find myself in an interesting situation. The Pathfinder campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", is going well; we're almost to the end of the first book, and the inevitable confrontation with the mysterious Stag Lord. This fellow is the mastermind behind the local bandit problem, and is the main obstacle to the settling of the area by civilised folk.

The thing is, I think I know who he is. This isn't through having seen spoilers, or even worse, cheating, but rather that the authors of the first adventure book have laid a number of, to my eye obvious, clues. Which wouldn't be a problem, except I think I know, based on those same clues, how the entire campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", will turn out.

So that's the interesting situation. It's almost as if I've played the scenario before, so I'm going to remain quiet about what I think I know, in part to not spoil things for everyone else, and in part because my character, the tengu monk, is unlikely to have figured it out. And yet it's not quite like having read the scenario, because it's very possible that I've misread the signs, and the whole thing will go in a very different direction. There's almost another game going on here, a bit of narrative cat-and-mouse, as I find myself trying to out-think the authors.

We should meet (and very quickly eviscerate, if our barbarian continues to prove as effective as she has done so far) the Stag Lord in this week's game, and his unmasking will tell me a lot about the accuracy of my predictions. I can't wait!

Team Benny

One of the things I liked about Shadowrun was the Karma mechanic. It was a combination of experience points and an ahead-of-its-time action point system, so you could spend it between adventures to improve your character, or use it within a scenario to add dice to an action. The best bit about it, and the bit that was really ahead of its time, was the Team Karma concept. This was a pool of points which was used to boost actions, much like individual Karma, except that it was donated from the personal stashes of the player-characters, and could be used by any member of the team. Not only did it have an effect on game mechanics, but it also tied the group together.

On Saturday, I finally ran an Eberron game, using the Savage Worlds rules; I might post a summary of that game later, but there's something else I want to discuss first. Savage Worlds also has an action point mechanism, called "Bennies" in the game's terminology, and these Bennies have multiple uses. There are no hard and fast rules for awarding these points, and they're more of a general award for good play.

Each player starts with around three Bennies, depending on the setting, and can pick up more through the session, while the GM gets one for each of the players, plus two for each main villain. The interesting thing here is that the first set of GM Bennies are kept in a pool which can be used by any NPC, while the latter set can only be used by the NPC to which they're attached.

So what happens if you use a similar system for the players? The three Bennies with which they start the game are theirs to use alone, but any Bennies awarded during the session go into a Team Bennies pool, which can be tapped by any player. Furthermore, any player can donate any of their personal Bennies to the pool should they so wish.

Note that this does cross over somewhat with the Common Bond Edge, although that can be used on any Wild Card, whereas this rule only applies to player-characters. Next time I run Savage Eberron, I'm going to give this a go.

The Undying Sorcerer

This is my contribution to Zak's Secret Arneson Gift Exchange. If you want to see what it's all about, click on the link, but essentially it's celebrating the lives of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons by creating something new for the game.

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Aeons ago, when the continents had different shapes and long before mankind climbed down from the trees, the land was ruled by a proud and mighty reptilian empire, of which the lizardfolk of today are but the atavistic descendants. Their religion taught of a glorious afterlife, in which the dead would live again, and in the case of the nobility, complete with all their possessions, including their slaves.

This was a lie. The dead found a vast, featureless grey wasteland, where everyone was on an equal footing, and the riches gathered in their material lives would have been of no use, even if they had transferred over as expected.

One priest-lord decided to escape, and turning all its mystical learning to the problem, found a way back to the material plane, only to discover that millennia had passed, its beloved serpent empire had long passed into ruin, and its body had become a dry, withered mummy. Further long stretches of time passed, the priest-lord trapped in its old body, itself trapped in its tomb, surrounded by useless treasures.

But then the humans, inquisitive as ever, broke into its tomb and began looting the priest-lord's belongings. One of them opened its sarcophagus and reached in to pilfer its burial jewellery, brushing against the mummy's arid flesh, and the ancient creature sensed an opening, a connection.

And jumped.
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The Undying Sorcerer is the soul of an ancient magician occupying the physical form of some humanoid being. It has spent untold millennia trapped in a sterile afterlife and having returned to the material plane, wants nothing more than to enjoy life in the most hedonistic way possible. Having awoken in a tomb surrounded by wealth appropriate to a member of the nobility, it has found that it has lots of money to spend on the most exquisite depravities, and that modern human society is only too keen to participate; the Sorcerer is most often found not in some dusty tomb, but in high society, throwing decadent parties for the aristocracy.

Having seen, and performed, all kinds of horrors in its time, and having been trapped in a hell without sensation, life and colour, the Undying Sorcerer fears nothing but a return to that joyless afterlife, and will fight with ferocity to prevent such a fate.

(Game statistics are in Labyrinth Lord format, but should be easy enough to convert to other fantasy games of Arneson/Gygax descent.)

No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120 (40)
Armor Class: By armour (varies)
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: By weapon (varies) or Spell
Damage: By weapon (varies)
Save: C9
Morale: 11
Hoard Class: XVII

The Undying Sorcerer is usually equipped with the best armour and weaponry money can buy, but will try to avoid direct combat. It will be accompanied by 2d4 humanoid or trained animal bodyguards, each of at least 2HD, and 2d12 concubines, around half of which will be humanoid. Once per day, the Sorcerer can also summon up to two animal-headed demons (treat as gargoyles) to fight on its behalf; these return to their home plane by the following sunrise or sunset, or if killed. The Undying Sorcerer avoids lizardfolk, as it is disgusted by their decline.

The Undying Sorcerer casts spells as a fifteenth-level cleric. If druid spells are available, then the Sorcerer also has access to these, at the same level of ability.

As a form of undead, the Undying Sorcerer is immune to Charm, Feeblemind, Hold, Polymorph, Sleep, and Death spells (such as Power Word: Kill or Ray of Death). These immunities are mystical in nature, and apply to both its original and host bodies. It can be turned; a success forces its soul back into the original, mummified body.

The Undying Sorcerer's most potent ability is that of transferring its soul to a new body. It can transfer at will, and over any distance, to its original body, or to a nearby mindless vessel, such as a golem, but otherwise must touch or be touched by its target, then the target must make a save versus spells in order to resist the transfer. A living victim's soul may be simply overpowered, or it may be forced out of the body to another location, at the GM's discretion. The Undying Sorcerer has access to all innate abilities of its host body, but not spells or other learned abilities.

If the host body is killed or destroyed, the Undying Sorcerer will attempt to transfer to its killer, or a nearby vessel, but if not will return to its original body. Should this original body be destroyed, then the creature is flung back to the afterlife, even if occupying a different body at the time. The mummy is guarded at all times to prevent such a fate, and the Sorcerer keeps prisoners at close hand for a quick transfer if forced back.

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My brief for this was "A monster midway between a vampire and a lich in power. It should have spellcasting powers and other abilities that would place it at the peak of Expert-level challenge (14th level). An Egyptian theme is a plus."

I'm not that familiar with the mechanics of D&D, so I decided instead to focus on the fluff side of things and make the monster interesting and different enough that the rules didn't matter. I had a look at a lich and a vampire and went for something that was roughly between the two. Then I got to working on the fluff, which was much more fun. The Egyptian theme was easy enough to incorporate, but since it's a fantasy game, I decided to go further back than a mere human civilisation, and a serpent empire seemed suitably pulpy. One thing I noted about the higher-level undead was that they were all bog-standard evil masterminds, and I wanted to do something different there too, so I had a think about what else might motivate the Undying Sorcerer. I liked the idea of a being who had come back from the dead out of a genuine love of life, but to maintain enough of an edge to make it possible for the being to an antagonist, I settled on the idea of the ultimate hedonist, someone who wanted to live life to the fullest, because it had already seen, and rejected, what death had to offer.

Living in a Box

Back in my youthful gaming days, I remember a collaborative game of Dungeoneer in which we'd take turns to GM the thing as the rest of the group wandered about a world map. Dungeoneer is a very broken game, but we had fun with the aimless format, perhaps because everything else we were playing at the time was quite plot-focused.

With the rise in interest in such sandbox gaming sweeping the gaming blogs over the past couple of years (which has even led to both Paizo and Wizards of the Coast releasing sandbox scenarios), I've been itching to have a go at such a freeform game again. I made an attempt to run something of the sort in Call of Cthulhu, but the players resisted it, with good reason I think, and so it didn't work out. Later, I had another go with Rogue Trader, and this was much more successful, as the game is much more suited to exploration and poking around at the corners of the map to see what's there.

That campaign's taking a break (oh, and such plans I have!), but I obviously did something right, as we moved straight into another sandbox game, this time using Paizo's Pathfinder rules. I think the plan may have been to use D&D4 at first, but we've had a good go with that ruleset, and I'm not sure it's to our tastes as a group; this suits me, as I was out of gaming for the entirety of D&D3's lifespan, so Pathfinder gives me a chance to see what the game is like.

I was a bit concerned, as I've seen and heard many horror stories about the pernicious crunchiness of D&D3, but we're about four sessions in, and it seems no more fiddly than D&D2 was, and is much less of a hassle to play than the overly tactical (to my mind) D&D4. It does strike me that something like Swords and Wizardry would be a more appropriate to a hex crawl game, but we've invested too much money and effort to switch now!

We're playing through the Kingmaker series of books (how Paizo's Adventure Path format translates to a freeform game, I don't know, so I'm keen to have a look at the books once we're done), and so far it's been great fun; we've got a proper old-school hex map, and we're wandering around the wilderness, investigating points of interest, fighting wandering monsters, and all that great retro goodness.

Fight On! #9

(Full disclosure, as well as providing some artwork for this issue, I've also submitted an article; I've written up this scenario, converted to the X-Plorers rpg, because it's more old-school than Rogue Trader is. That's only a tiny part of the magazine though, so there's something for everyone!)

When you're down to your last hit point, your last spell, the last charge on your laser pistol - what now? Fight On! Issue #9 is here, stampeding out of the gate with adventures big and small, a city-state, races, classes, monsters, spells, tricks, traps, tables, rules options, random encounters, NPCs, and a motherlode of mighty miscellaneous mysteries to give your game a boost! Dedicated to Paul Jaquays, this issue features contributions from Jeff Rients, Sang Lee, Tavis Allison, Kelvin Green, Geoffrey McKinney, Patrick Farley, Zak S., Erik Battle, James Quigley, Mark Allen, Jennifer Weigel, Gabor Lux, Peter Schmidt Jensen, Ed Heil, Paul Fini, Raven Daegmorgan, Eric Minton, Allen Varney, Baz Blatt, Geoffrey O. Dale, Jerry Stratton, Chris Robert, Calithena, Jeff Talanian, and many, many more!

Don't get caught without the old school's newest resources - check it out at http://www.lulu.com/product/11474062 ! From now until the end of June, Issue #9 will be available at a discount price of just $9!


But that's not all - our entire back inventory is on sale as well! Fill out your collection or pick up that special article you've been wondering about, at rock-bottom prices:

Issue 1 is $6.50, down from $6.99.
Issues 2, 5, 7, and 8 are $8.50, down from $9.99
Issues 3, 4, and 6 are $9.50, down from $9.99

Finally, and ONLY for this month, our unique June 2010 editions of the two Fight On! compendia are available in hardback. $40 apiece, each of these covers a full year of Fight On! (issues 1-4 and 5-8) under a single cover. Unique collector's items clocking in at around 400 pages each, these are great buys for those who prefer the format, wish to start from the beginning, or just want to have a cool and unique thing that nobody else does. You can see them here:

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The sale only lasts until June 30, so pick 'em up while you can! The TOC for issue 9 is as follows:

Top of the Class (various)…………….…………………3
Bird-Men of Hyperborea (Jeffrey P. Talanian)………...…8
Knights & Knaves (SilverFish)…………………………..9
Spellslingers for Hire (James A. Smith)…………………11
The City-State of Khosura, Part I (Gabor Lux)....………12
Inter-Session Events (J.E. Badelaire)……………….…..24
Purchasing Potions (Eric Minton)……………………...25
The Hobgoblin God’s Crown (James Quigley)…………27
In My World… (Calithena)…………………………….40
Den of Villainy (Antii Hulkonnen)……………………..43
Education of a Magic User (Douglas Cox)……………...44
GBH (Peter Schmidt Jensen)…………………………...45
The Singing Cave (Mark J. Allen)………………………46
The Contemptible Cube of Quazar (Johnson & Lynk)…47
New Jersey After The “Big Whoops” (Adam Thornton).48
Creepies & Crawlies (Zak S.)…………………………...49
Ten Dooms of the Icy Wastes (Chris Robert)………….52
The Yellow Forest (Jerry Stratton)……………………...58
Tables for Fables (Age of Fable)……………………….63
Post-Apocalyptic Crafting (Lawson Reilly)……………..64
Dungeon Modules: Riverwalk (Geoffrey O. Dale)……...65
Two Tribes (Kelvin Green)…………………………….69
The Temple of Thek (Baz Blatt)………………………..73
Random’s Assortment (Random, Jensen, and Ant)……..77
Caves of the Beast Mistress (Tavis Allison)…………….79
Interview w/ Paul Jaquays (Ciro Sacco & Allen Varney)..90
The Darkness Beneath (Jeff Rients)……………………96
Merlyn’s Mystical Mirror (McKinney & Pookie)………104
The End of the World (Del Beaudry)…………………109
Witches of N’Kai (Caleb Jensen)……………………...113
Grognard’s Grimoire (Eric Minton)…………………...114
Artifacts, Adjuncts, & Oddments (Reed & Barber)……115
Front Cover by Raven Daegmorgan. Back cover by Mark Allen. Fight On! logo by Jeff Rients. Interior art by Paul Fini (3), Black Blade Publishing (black-blade-publishing. com: 5,35), Troll and Toad (trollandtoad.com: 6), Ian Baggley (8), Ed Heil (9,65), Peter Schmidt Jensen (10,33,45,103), Bronze Age Miniatuers (bronzeagemin.com, 11), Gabor Lux (12,13,15,17,19), Jennifer Weigel (25,26), Mark Allen (marjasall.com, 27,32,37,46,49,50,51), Alex Schröder (27,29,66), Robert S. Conley (batintheattic.com: 31,96), Steve Robertson (36), James Quigley (37), Erik C. Battle (38,41,68,75,97,101), Stefan Poag (39), Antii Hulkonnen (43), Douglas Cox (44), Jimm Johnson & Jeff Lynk (47), Adam Thornton (48), Zak S. (51), Patrick Farley (53), Kesher (55), Geoffrey McKinney (56), DEI Games (deigames.com: 57), Kelvin Green (59,70,71,72,102), Wikimedia Commons (60), William Buckland (62), Steve aka Bat (62), Age of Fable (63), Lawson Reilly (64,65), Spellbook Games (spellbookgames.com: 67), Anthony Stiller (77, 78), Tavis & Javi Allison (81), Sang Lee (82,83,84,85), Sean Elliott (89), Otherworld Miniatures (otherworld.me. uk: 91), Jeff Rients (99), Kevin Mayle (100), Rjad (104), Christopher Cale & Co. (107), karenswhimsy.com (108), William Miller (111), Robert D. Reed (115), Lee Barber (116, Knights & Knaves logo, Creepies & Crawlies logo).

Fight on!

For the Emperor! (and Charity!)

I wouldn't normally use the group blog for selling something, but this is in a good cause.

In celebration of the upcoming Deathwatch Space Marine rpg and the new Storm Wardens Space Marine chapter introduced within, a group of gaming bloggers are putting together a complete Storm Wardens army for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame, and then are giving it away in a charity raffle.

To enter, just go to this post and donate as much as you like, via Paypal. $1 gets you one raffle ticket, you can buy as many as you like, and all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.

These guys, and this competition, are in no way affiliated with the Brighton Gamers group, or myself, but I thought it was a good project, and one worth mentioning to others.

Rogue Trader Session 15: Part 15 of a 1-Part Limited Series

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol-wielding weapons monkey, sent to the newly-acquired Thunderhammer to make sure all is shipshape, since David was off buying a car or something. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R, playing from Manchester, via Skype)

---

As a group, we had decided that we'd had fun with Rogue Trader, but that it was perhaps time for a change. With plenty of plot threads still to finish, we decided to call this the end of the first "season", to use US TV terminology, and revisit the game later in the year. In the meantime, there was the small matter of the infestation of the walking dead at Jameson's Hollow.

It was a bit of an experimental session, with the group entering the twenty-first century by using Skype to have Ric join us for the finale, and in that spirit, I designed a little mini-game to handle the battle against the undead hordes. Running it as a series of fights would have been a grind, and we'd already done a big battle on the bridge of the Thunderhammer, so I didn't want to go over old ground in our last session.

Instead, I designed a modified exploration challenge. There were three known groups of survivors on the station, and each group would be at 50% strength by the time the players got to them; this survival rate would be modified up or down by 10% depending on the results of five skill rolls per group. If the players went after one group at a time, any failures would also count against the other two groups, but if they went after all three groups, they would have to split the party. Any skill could be used in the challenge, as long as the player could come up with a good in-context reason, or even better, narrate the skill use.

Ben burned a fate point in order to rescue the third group without having to make a test, then the team split, with the priest and the militant going after the second group, while the rest of the team went after the first lot. Through some clever tactical nous, some stealth, and a bit of shooting, the two teams got to their destinations, discovering hundreds of exhausted people, shivering in the dark. Aphesius and Mordecai found that many of their group were injured, which slowed down the evacuation, which in turn led to more of the Risen catching up with them; they had a choice between letting the dead pick of the stragglers, or stopping each time to fight off the attackers, and in a rare moment of altruism from the priest, they did the latter.

Over at the other side of the void station, the rest of the team found their group of survivors apparently held hostage by the former astropath of Jameson's Hollow, now quite dead, but still somehow in control of his psychic abilities. A short battle followed in which the dead psyker was killed once more, his death unleashing a torrent of warp energies which twisted reality in the immediate vicinity, plunging the area into unnatural darkness, and allowing some daemonic presence through just enough to whisper blasphemous secrets directly into the minds of the explorers.

Even so, the explorers returned victorious, rescuing the vast majority of the survivors before turning their new chemical weapon on the station, melting the dead inside as they did the crew of the Thunderhammer. As a result of their success, they were able to negotiate an exclusive deal with the authorities, barring any Rogue Traders other than themselves and Moullierre from using the station's facilities.

They then headed to their holdings in the Mianded system, to fill out their crew and get some shore leave, before returning to pick up Moullierre and her alien husband; both Aphesius and Sol attempted to charm Moullierre, hoping to gain some kind of advantage, but the canny Trader got the better of both of them. The party then headed to the Soangre system, where the Eldar had told them they would find a way for him to contact his people. Sure enough, suspended in space at the mid point between the system's binary stars was a shimmering portal, something Triptych knew was akin to a Warp tunnel, but at the same time not. It was also far too small for either of the explorers' starships, but would accommodate a shuttle. Their xeno prisoner indicated that this portal would lead them to their destination, and with considerable reluctance, the team got in a shuttle with the Eldar, with Moullierre and some hand-picked troops in the other, and headed for the portal.

As Triptych, at the helm, guided their craft through the unnatural passage in space-time, their vox units crackled into life, with a message from the Banshee bridge crew alerting them to the presence of other starships in the system. Before they could respond, their momentum carried their shuttlecraft through the portal and into the unknown.

Which is where we left it. Perhaps we will return one day to discover what's on the other side of the portal, and perhaps not; there is always a hint of sadness when a campaign comes to a close, but we got fifteen sessions out of what was only supposed to be a one-shot, so I can't complain.

Rogue Trader Session 14: Death by Pointy Stick

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol wielding weapons monkey, sent to the newly-acquired Thunderhammer to make sure all is shipshape, since David was off buying a car or something. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

---

This is quite a long one. We played for an extra hour, but barely any of it was scripted, as the players spent most of their time pursuing their own schemes. They're also a cautious lot who like to cover every eventuality before they take action, so there's always lots of planning and dealing going on at the table, and I don't have to do anything except listen. This game has been easy, and a lot of fun, to GM for that reason.

The duel of honour between Octavius Sol and Imperial Commander Ernst Kruger would begin at 06:00 hours, and already there was a palpable buzz aboard the ragtag fleet of refugee vessels surrounding the Risen-infested void station of Jameson's Hollow. While Sol busied himself with practising his mêlée skills, the rest of the gang set about stacking the odds in favour of their seneschal. Maximillius created a small hidden poison dispenser which would attach to Sol's spear; the hope was that since it was a weapon of xeno design, such an addition would be difficult to spot. He also met up with some of the Banshee's underdeck scum and purchased a cheap home-made version of the combat drug Frenzon, just to give Sol a further edge in the fight.

Meanwhile, the priest studied the rules of a formal duel and also tried to uncover any particular weaknesses Kruger might have, and which they could exploit. It was discovered that the Commander was a solid, even boring, man, devoted to military service, but with a strong sense of honour; it was this stability which led to him being assigned to the frontier outpost in the first place. He was also discovered to be an orphan, adopted into the Kruger family, but Alesaunder did not have the time to turn up any more on this line of enquiry. As one last action, the priest made it clear to Kruger's men that any attempt to interfere in the duel would not be appreciated, and that he had two starships bristling with weapons with which to make the point, if necessary.

The hour of the duel arrived, and the explorers arrived at the makeshift arena constructed within one of Moullierre's vessel's cargo holds to discover a sizeable crowd. A twenty metre square area at the centre was roped off, and the audience sat around this on barrels, cargo crates and anything else they could find. Another area was roped off for the assembled dignitaries and nobles; present was their own Trader Locke, Aurelie Moullierre the host, and Kruger's second-in-command, Augustus Schtolnik. Zarak was not present, and Triptych discovered that the suspected Inquisitor had been found dead in his room on Moullierre's vessel earlier that morning, a victim of poison.

(This poison was created by the explorator and administered by the seneschal, at the very same dinner at which Sol and Kruger had the argument which led to the duel. Triptych was not aware of this plan, however, and Ric played his reaction as genuine shock and surprise.)

Alesaunder accompanied his cousin Sol to the ring, and used his considerable social skills to not only whip Sol up into a frenzy, but to also distract and demoralise Kruger; Sol was already under the effects of Frenzon as well as the still-unknown influence of the alien spear, so the players hoped that they'd done enough, as the odds were very much in favour of the military man. Alas, Kruger fumbled his roll to resist the taunting, which changed everything.



Sol, in a murderous rage charged the Commander, who seemed to just stand there with a look of confusion on his face. The first blow was but a scratch, shaving off a slice of Kruger's ear, but a second pierced his thigh, blood welling from the savage wound. Watching from behind the rope barrier, Alesaunder was surprised to discover one of the red-robed figures from his dream standing beside him, apparently enjoying the duel; a discussion followed, in which the figure made another offer of power and immortality to the priest, mentioning that Aphesius was of particular interest to them, as the explorator and navigator were barely human, and that Sol "belonged to another".

Meanwhile, Triptych was scanning the crowd with his Warp eye, on the look out for baleful energies, and spotted the hooded figure talking to the priest. Recognising the figure from the description Aphesius had given him of the dream, Triptych pushed his way through the crowd to tell Moullierre that there was a Warp entity on her vessel.

Sol jabbed again at Kruger, who again failed to put up a solid defence, and this time the alien weapon sunk into the muscles at the Commander's shoulder, rendering his left arm useless. Sol felt some force empowering him, something other than the combat drugs, something which seemed to fill him with energy and in a blur of speed he made a second attack, once more to Kruger's leg, this time shearing the limb completely. The crowd gasped in surprise as the military man fell to the ground and blood gushed all over the deck. Triptych shuddered as he saw his seneschal surrounded by blasphemous xeno energies no one else could see.

The red-robed figure was overjoyed by this display of violence, which perhaps contributed to Alesaunder once more rejecting the offer. With a shrug, the figure claimed that he had "other options", walked into the middle of the expanding pool of Kruger's blood, and with a salute to the priest, sank into the pool as if it had real depth. Meanwhile, the Commander had begun twitching, but before anything could be done to prevent his rise from the dead, Sol screamed that same unnatural scream the explorers had heard on the bridge of the Thunderhammer and brought the spear down through Kruger's chest and into the deck plating underneath, with a shower of eldritch red sparks. Those who were present at the spear's discovery couldn't help but note the similarities.

Shocked by this series of events, the crowd dispersed, and the explorers warily approached the howling seneschal with an eye to calming him down. Many minutes later, Sol came to his senses, with little memory of the duel, but a feeling of elation flooding through every fibre of his being.

After a brief detour to see for themselves whether Zarak was indeed dead, the explorers returned to their ongoing plan to turn the situation at Jameson's Hollow to their advantage, offering to clear the station of the Risen in exchange for exclusive access to the station's facilities. Kruger had not been keen on this suggestion, seeing it as dishonourable at best and blackmail at worst, but with him out of the way, the team hoped that Schtolnik would prove more open to the plan. He did, although it seemed more through weariness than anything else, and so the explorers moved forward with the next stage, which was to find out more about the Risen before they attempted to rescue the survivors still on the station.

To do this, they met again with the Eldar held captive in a secret part of Moullierre's vessel. He again repeated his offer to go to his people and ask for assistance, in return for his freedom from his prison. Although they still did not trust the alien, the explorers felt that he was their only option to find out a way to stop the undead plague, and so tentatively agreed, on the grounds that they would accompany him to his destination. They also convinced Moullierre to allow her husband's freedom, although she too insisted on accompanying them, albeit in their vessel, as she wasn't keen on her "in-laws" discovering her. With the bare bones of an agreement in place, the team decided to first rescue the survivors on the void station, and returned to their ship to formulate a plan.

Rogue Trader Session 13: Come Dine With Me

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol wielding weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

Full house again!

---

On the battle bridge of the Thunderhammer, the explorers fought a horde of undead crew members, while a hulking figure they took to be the captain, Telemon Maul, waded through the mêlée towards Octavius Sol, having issued a formal challenge to the seneschal.

Perhaps it was decided that the dead have no need for honour, or perhaps the priest simply did not care, as he fought his way to Sol in order to aid his ally in the duel. Meanwhile, the rest of the team fought the massed dead, Maximillius swinging his power axe to and fro, lopping off limbs and heads as he went, and the Banshee's elite guardsmen turning their flamers on the shambling dead, their aim guided by their faith in the Emperor, as well as the commands of the battle-hardened Mordecai. The navigator Triptych fared less well, suffering a grievous wound as a lucky knife strike took him in the belly, spilling his innards across the deck. If it were not for Triptych's mutant healing abilities, he would have died there and then, lying amongst his own intestines.

(To run each of the zombies individually would have fried my brain, so I instead ran the mob as one creature with multiple attacks. It had 300 Wounds, and was capable of three attacks against each player-character per round; reduced to 200 Wounds, it would only be capable of two attacks, and once down to 100, it could only attack each character once per round. This was an experiment, but it worked out well, and I'll be using it again.)

Sol found himself struggling to harm his opponent, even with the strange spear he'd rescued from the Eldar ruins, but death seemed to have made the captain sluggish and clumsy, and his attacks went wide, allowing the seneschal and priest to wear him down, with Sol striking the final blow, an attack so brutal it split the captain in two; at this point Sol uttered an inhuman cry, chilling the bones of everyone present, and the seneschal wondered what kind of influence the alien weapon had over him.

Eventually the battle was won, and the explorers found themselves in control of the bridge, but there was still the pressing problem of the 95,000 dead crew members roaming the halls of the Thunderhammer. Checking the logs, Maximillius discovered that the ship's drives had suffered some kind of malfunction while in the Warp, flooding the vessel with deadly radiation, killing many, and allowing them to rise as the restless dead. Outnumbered, the survivors were picked off one by one, before making a final, and apparently futile, stand on the bridge. A number of plans for cleansing the ship were considered, and most rejected as being too impractical, until the explorers hit upon the idea of unleashing some kind of toxin which would destroy biological material. The tech-priest made some quick calculations and came up with a suitable formula and, making contact with his deputies aboard the Banshee, gave them the instructions to mass-produce the toxin. The process would take three days, which matched up well with the distance between the two starships. Now, all they could do was wait.

The Banshee arrived with the bio-weapon, as well as the news that the suspected Inquisitor Zarak had moved to the Rogue Trader Aurelie Moullierre's vessel, the Dark Filament; this concerned the explorers, as they suspected that Zarak was working against them in some way. That would have to wait, however, as they had a job to do. The Thunderhammer's life support systems were loaded with the toxin, and the ship was flooded with the deadly concoction; a day or so later, and the chemical had done its work, melting the dead crew into a greasy mulch. Maximillius vented the poison into space and recycled the ship's atmosphere, making it safe once more for the living, and the explorers set about transferring enough crew from their vessel to operate the massive battleship.

They sent a vox cast to the Dark Filament, informing those present that the Locke dynasty had claimed the Thunderhammer as salvage, and requesting a crisis meeting with Moullierre, Imperial Commander Kruger, and Inquisitor Zarak. A sumptuous banquet was prepared aboard the Banshee, and the dignitaries were made comfortable as talks began on how to deal with the undead menace. In the background, the explorers arranged to have refugees from the abandoned void station moved to the Thunderhammer to serve as temporary crew, and Sol had Zarak's meal poisoned with the same toxin used to deal with Flavion so many months ago, an act he kept secret from his fellows. It was perhaps a prescient move, as Zarak greeted the explorers with a smile, which further convinced them that he was up to something.

It seems that whenever the player-characters get into tense negotiations like this, everything goes wrong, and they start making enemies. Perhaps informing Kruger that they wanted control of his station in exchange for the release of their new bio-weapon was not the best tactic, as the noble became enraged with such double-dealing in a time of crisis and called the explorers' honour into question, which then enraged Octavius Sol, who called for a duel. Kruger agreed, and stormed out of the negotiations, returning to his temporary base aboard Moullierre's vessel. For her part, Moullierre seemed to be amused by all the testosterone floating about, but also asked the explorers if the rumours she'd heard about the alien ruins they'd discovered were true, and that they had explored an Eldar temple. When this was confirmed, she asked them to meet her aboard her own vessel at midnight, before returning to the feast.

After the meal, and with negotiations stalled, the explorers got in contact with Augustus Shtolnik, Kruger's second-in-command, to discuss the details of the duel. Shtolnik informed them that the fight would take place aboard the Dark Filament, and that it would be to the death, although they would be allowed to choose the weapon used. Perhaps under a xeno influence, Sol chose the spear, and went to his quarters to practise.

Leaving the seneschal to his training, the rest of the team headed over to the Dark Filament as requested, and suspecting a trap were surprised to find Moullierre waiting for them alone. She had each of them swear an oath of honour to not reveal what they would see aboard her vessel, and then led them through a warren of passages into the depths of the ship. There, hidden behind a number of secure doors, they were shown a single dirty cell in which was chained a humanoid figure, clearly malnourished and mistreated. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom in the unlit prison, they recognised the figure as one of the treacherous Eldar, and Moullierre introduced it as her husband, before leaving them alone.

The Eldar captive listened as the explorers explained what they had seen on Zeesol, and he confirmed that they had destroyed one of his people's temples. He also told them that the Eldar knew a thing or two about death, and that it sounded like the door between life and death had been opened, which was allowing the dead to return from beyond, hence the current plague. However, he also informed them that we was no expert on such matters, although he could find such experts. The price he gave for such aid was, of course, his freedom.

Rogue Trader Session 12: Never Trust a Priest

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, newly-promoted weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails technician from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

Full house! Ding!

---

Aphesius and Mordecai stood above the bloody remnants of Telemachus Locke, the son and only heir of their Rogue Trader, but the guards they'd brought with them were busy subduing the cultists, and the cultists were busy being subdued, so no one else had yet discovered the cult leader's true identity. So they quickly hid the incriminating medallion, and turned a flamer on the corpse, proclaiming that such heretics should be burned, particularly as they'd not yet solved the problem of the rising dead. In order to deflect attention away from the cult leader, the priest ordered that the remaining cultists should also be executed, and with some reluctance, the guardsmen unleashed fiery death upon the restrained death cultists, most of whom accepted their demise in a state of religious ecstasy.

The cult leader's assistants were led away for interrogation, and through the application of violence (Mordecai) and weird psychic manipulation (Triptych) the team discovered that the cult was being led by someone they called the "boy king", and that he had come to them during that period when the Banshee was lost in the warp for two hundred days; the explorers wondered whether some malign daemonic influence may have infiltrated the ship during this time in the empyrean. They discovered more about the cult's beliefs, but could not pin them down as true heresy, as the cultists seemed to believe that they were worshipping the Emperor in his aspect as a being hovering on the border between life and death. At this point, Aphesius made an executive decision and declared the cult heretical, which just so happened to tie in nicely with his previous order to have them all burned to death.

There followed a sequence which touched my cynical GM's heart, as the players began conspiring against each other. This was a great bit of roleplaying, as the players were all aware of Telemachus' death, but only the characters of Mordecai and Aphesius knew, so they decided to keep the truth from their comrades. Aphesius went to Locke, spinning a tale the boy had not attended his spiritual lessons for a number of days, and the Rogue Trader tasked him with finding Telemachus, who'd undoubtedly just gone exploring in the lower decks again. Then the priest and the gunbunny began planning to arrange evidence to support their version of events.

During the night, Aphesius was woken by a knocking at his door, and answering, he found himself looking out on a vast plain of bleached white skulls stretching out as far as the eye could see, with foreboding black storm clouds boiling in the sky ahead. He attempted to return to bed, but found that the door was now behind him, and locked. Not only that, but he turned to find himself facing eight red-robed figures, who all spoke with a single voice, acknowledging his killing of their champion, and offering the priest the chance to take his place. Aphesius was briefly tempted, but his faith returned to him, and he uttered a prayer to the God-Emperor, which seemed to break the illusion, and he found himself back in his cabin, drenched in sweat.

The next morning, the priest mentioned his dream to his companions, and Triptych's long study of the esoteric meant that he found some elements of the dream familiar, but he could not quite place them. In the meantime, Aphesius arranged for Telemachus' medallion to be "discovered" in a service duct, and we had some more good roleplaying, as Ben, playing an explorator with a fanatical desire to uncover hidden truths, decided to investigate further, and found that the only person to go anywhere near the duct in recent times was the acolyte Aphesius had sent to "discover" the medallion. Already suspicious of the preacher, Maximillius kept his discovery to himself for the moment.

The group approached Locke and revealed that they had discovered a death cult aboard the ship, that it was probably a front for worship of the Ruinous Powers, and that the cult had likely killed Telemachus, although no body had been found. They gave Locke his son's medallion, and left the noble to his thoughts, turning the Banshee towards Jameson's Hollow in order to answer the distress signal they had received previously.

Arriving in-system, their auger arrays picked up a small flock of vessels in orbit around the void station, including the Dark Filament, the ship of Rogue Trader Aurelie Moullierre, with whom they had an alliance. They also detected the Thunderhammer, the vessel of the military minded Telemon Maul, hanging back at the edge of the system, apparently without power. They got in touch with the Dark Filament, and were surprised to have the call answered by Kruger, the commander of Jameson's Hollow. He revealed that the station had been abandoned due to the swarms of living dead, and that the survivors were packed into the vessels in orbit; the priority was overcrowding and resources, and Kruger requested that the Banshee help to lighten the load a little. The explorers were reluctant to let a bunch of refugees on board, and asked to speak to Moullierre, who seemed pleased to see them. Remembering how well she and Locke got on, the explorers suggested that she come on board the Banshee, in the hopes that she might be able to cheer up the distraught Trader. They also asked about the Thunderhammer, and discovered that no one else had noticed its presence; the explorers were immediately suspicious, and decided to check out Maul's vessel for themselves.

They sent the Banshee to meet up with Moullierre, and took a shuttle full of troops out to the Thunderhammer. Inching closer, they detected that the ship was active, but seemed to be on silent running, waiting for something. As they approached even closer, the cruiser's array of weapons came to life, and Triptych found himself having to weave the shuttle through a hell of plasma lances and explosive ordnance, a hair-raising few minutes, if the mutant navigator had hair of course. The shuttle docked with the vast ex-naval vessel at a point which Maximillius guessed was close to the command bridge. They found the corridors of the ship quiet and empty, and advanced carefully, getting to the bridge without challenge, that is until they opened the blast doors. Inside, milling about without apparent purpose, was a throng of walking corpses, all clad in flak armour, and wielding automatic weapons and monoknives, a shock to the explorers, who had expected to see more of the feral dead they'd encountered elsewhere. Slumped in the golden command throne at the centre of the bridge was an unmoving figure clad in the flak armour of an Imperial military officer, but the explorers had little time to pick out further details as the horde of dead surged to the attack.

The explorers and their soldiers opened fire, but a mêlée soon ensued, with the slashing and stabbing of monoknives met with close range pistol blasts and the bone-cracking thud of rifle butts. In all this, Sol and Mordecai attempted to pick off the figure in the command throne, but the mass of ornamentation and technology provided cover, and they could only score glancing hits. As the combat escalated, the figure rose from the throne with a painful slowness, smoke rising from the few hits which had been scored, and looked at each of the explorers, before turning to the sensechal. Raising its arm, the figure pointed its power maul at Sol and bowed its head, a gesture the seneschal recognised as a formal combat challenge. Then the figure began wading through the mêlée towards Octavius Sol.

Rogue Trader Session 11: Interview With The Zombie

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, newly-promoted weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails technician from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (An NPC this week, as Stuart F was off exploring the Emerald Isle)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Also an NPC, as Ric R was trapped in the hellish dimension known as Manchester)

---

Last time, the explorers had been witness to, and a possible cause of, a bizarre Warp event which saw the dead rising from the grave. Concerned for their holdings, and curious as to how widespread this effect was, the team decided to head for their stronghold in the Mianded system. Arriving there, they discovered that the restless dead were a problem here too, but due to the way the population of the hive city of Antiriad interred their deceased, in vast sealed catacombs beneath the city, large scale damage had been averted for the time being. Even so, their majordomo Falcone was pleased to see them arrive to take charge.

However, their minds were more on experimentation than liberation, and the team set about a plan to capture one of the dead for study, before realising that there was a more efficient, not to mention safer, alternative. So they pulled a prisoner from one of Antiriad's prisons, strapped him down, killed him, and waited for him to reanimate. The unfortunate criminal did indeed soon return to a cursed half-life, and the priest Alesaunder began his interrogations, but even his vaunted social skills were not up to the task of communicating with the creature, which though not mindless, seemed set on breaking free of its bonds and attacking its captors.

On a hunch, the explorers took the creature to the Banshee, and dropped into the Warp, at which point the demeanour of the undead thing changed. Its hostile urges seemed to abate somewhat, and its previous personality surfaced, enabling communication at long last. The team discovered that the dead hated the living, envying and hungering for their life-force, but nothing the explorers had seen suggested that there was any transfer of life energy between the dead and their victims; it seemed as if the attacks were motivated by nothing more than an atavistic sense of spite. The dead criminal also told Alesaunder that there was nothing after death, that even existence as a cursed thing was better than the oblivion beyond, and that even the light of the God-Emperor did not shine into the darkness found there. The priest held to his faith, and shrugged this off as another example of the dead's spiteful nature.

Alesaunder called some of his priests to his side in order conduct a ritual to exorcise the undead blasphemy, during which one of his deputies reported that a couple of priests, Douglas and Turner, had not been attending services as regularly as their brethren. The high priest was disturbed by this display of lapsed faith, and set to investigating the matter. He called Douglas to his offices, and found the cleric to be nervous and agitated, clearly distracted by something. Alesaunder turned this to his advantage and quickly broke the man, discovering that he and Turner had found another of the ship's priests, Persaud, wandering the lower decks despite being quite dead. Uncertain of what to do with their brother-priest, they had locked him in a storage room, and went there on occasion to attempt to lay his spirit to rest.

Persaud had been beaten to death, his skull and hands smashed, his jaw broken, and his neck snapped, and was in no condition to communicate, even while the Banshee was in the Warp. He was assigned to give services to the inhabitants of one of the lower engine decks, and the explorers focussed their investigations there, pulling in the chief, a grizzled engineer named Serafina. She told them that she knew nothing about Persaud's death, but she knew of a cult that had sprung up among her people, one that Persaud may have been investigating, although Serafina herself had overlooked the group since their work had not been affected by their new religious leanings. Alesaunder saw this as heresy, and had the chief dragged away for re-education.

Mordecai roughed up some of the local crew members and got the location of the cult's meeting place, a basic mess hall, and Maximillius set up hidden surveillance in the room. For his part, Sol attempted to shadow one of the suspected cult members, but was spotted, his elaborate finery sticking out like a sore thumb in the dark and greasy underdecks, and the crew member fled. Despite this, the cult meeting went ahead, with a number of crew members packed into the tiny meeting room while a short robed figure with a deep gravelly voice pontificated on the subjects of death, how death is a sacred gift, and how these creatures returned from beyond death were a blasphemy to be destroyed utterly, with as much violence as the faithful could muster.

The explorers launched their attack at this point, sending in troops armed with stun batons to pacify the crowd, while the team themselves went after the cult leader. As they fought with the panicked crowd, the cultist fled to a side door which had not shown up on Maximillius' plans, and seemed to be cut off from his control, so the explorator was not able to lock it remotely. Mordecai took aim with his twin hellpistols and caught the cultist in the calf, slowing him down, and giving the priest a chance to catch up. Alesaunder put the barrel of his boltgun against the neck of the hooded figure and ordered him to yield, but with a snarl, the figure leaped for the door. A burst of automatic fire from the boltgun shredded the head and upper torso of the cult leader, and the remnants slid to the floor.

While the guards rounded up the last of the cultists, Mordecai rushed over to the leader's remains, intent on restraining them before they rose again. As he rolled the corpse over, he saw that underneath the robes, it was wearing a medallion inscribed with the symbol of the Locke dynasty. Not only that, but the leader's relative lack of height was discovered to be due to him being but a child. With a sinking feeling, the team realised that they had just executed Telemachus Locke, the son and heir of their own Rogue Trader.

Rogue Trader Session 10: Death Space Doom

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, newly-promoted weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails technician from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (An NPC this week, as Stuart F was off trying to solve the Greek debt crisis)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

---

Last time, the crew of the Banshee had investigated a strange complex hidden beneath the surface of the rocky methane-rich world of Zeesol Sextus. Finding all manner of weird gribbly stuff down in the tombs, for tombs they seemed to be, the team decided to touch nothing, and return to the ship to plan their next move. Having slept on it, they returned the next morning to continue their investigations.

Triptych's affinity for the Warp, a result of centuries of selective breeding, led to him discovering that the entire complex was shifting and changing at a level beyond normal human perception; reality itself seemed fluid, which explained why they had often found themselves going around in circles the previous day. With a firmer grasp of how to get around the place, the team set about recording and collecting the contents of the tombs. They tested the strange portal a few more times, and considered the potential danger in sending a volunteer through, before deciding on the safer option of sealing a camera inside a spare void suit helmet, and sending that through instead. The helmet returned, encrusted in a thick frost, but otherwise unharmed, and the team sat down to watch the resulting film, a sanity-shaking experience that reminded Triptych of looking into the Warp itself.

Moving on, the team decided to try to claim the strange alien spear they'd discovered and, fearing that the skeleton through which the spear was thrust would jump up and attack them (as if!), they first turned their flamers on the room, immolating everything except the spear itself, which remained not only unharmed, but also at the exact same temperature at which it had been before the flame-happy priest decided to "purify" the chamber. The spear was lodged deep in the ground, and the whole team pitched in to tug it free, before handing it to Triptych. Wielding the spear made him feel fast, agile and powerful, but lacking skill with such weaponry, he passed it to Sol, who took it without comment.

Heading to the wraithbone room, they took a small sample, and returned to the Banshee. There, the wraithbone seemed to have a strange effect on their astropath, Ezekiel, driving him into a paranoid rage in which he threatened them a number of times and more or less turned into a bearded, paraplegic Gollum. Now, Ezekiel is not the friendliest of folks at the best of times, but this was enough to spook them, and the team returned to Zeesol Sextus and put the wraithbone sample straight back where it came from. Dissatisfied with what they had discovered thus far, and convinced that there was something else hidden in the star system, they decided to split up.



Aphesius, Mordecai and Maximillius stayed behind on the planet with a work crew, intent on scavenging the strange alien metal they found throughout the tomb complex, while Triptych took the Banshee on a mission to scout the other worlds in the system. Sol went along without comment.

The scanning mission turned up nothing of interest, but the workers on the planet were quite industrious, pulling down the massive alien structures, clearing the wraithbone from their hollow cores, and getting the metal frames ready for transport. They also ran into something in the tombs, something fast and stealthy. Then a couple of soldiers went missing. Now very spooked indeed, all personnel were pulled out of the underground chambers, and explosives were set off, collapsing the entrance under tonnes of rubble.

Which is when a psychic scream erupted from within the planet, causing headaches and nosebleeds among the crew at the site.

Ten minutes later, the scream hit the Banshee, with similar effects.

It took three days for the ship to return to Zeesol Sextus, by which time the crew camped out on the surface were jumping at every shadow, and were convinced that something was moving about underground. On their return to the ship, it was discovered that something was moving about in one of the storage bays, the one in which they were keeping the alien skeleton they'd found on a previous occasion. Sure enough, upon opening the bay, out came a shambolic monstrosity, a shapeless pile of bones with apparent murderous intent, but after a round of fast shooting, and a bizarre mêlée charge from Sol and his new alien spear, the creature fell back into its component pieces.

(What happened here was that I pulled a fast one on the players, and put them through James Raggi's excellent scenario Death Frost Doom, which is technically for D&D, but has too many good ideas for me to ignore. Now, I did modify it quite a bit, and there's as much of Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction and Russo's Ship of Fools in there as there is the original adventure, but there's enough that I should give credit where it is due.)

Their Rogue Trader called for a meeting to discuss recent events, while Maximillius busied himself with turning the alien metal into armour plating for their Rhino APC, as well as suits of light but strong armour for the group. It was decided that they would get in contact with Jameson's Hollow before they chose their next move, and their astropath received an ominous message from the void station, claiming that the dead had risen, and that urgent assistance was required.