Blah, blah, Warhammer 40k.

No heretics were burned. This evening's game was a bunch of talky-talky and character development. Well. As much character development as fascist zealots can have, I suppose.

The end result, however is this:

1) I have advanced to rank 6, and chose the Exorcist path.
2) I was promoted to Interrogator, and given my very own Rosette.

I predict. . . many deaths.

At some point this evening I told a frickin' unbound daemonhost that had been pestering us that he could take the deal he was offering, fold it up into sharp corners, and shove it up his ass (I rolled an 07 WP check, and that's what Victus would do). That was fun, but there will likely be consequences.

So, last night we had a big, big throw-down in our Dark Heresy game. It went. . . well. It went both "well" and "poorly".

"Well" in that we ended up "winning"; "poorly" in that my dude, Father Victus, took something like 25 total wounds during the fight, about four criticals, and had to burn two fate points. He lost his left arm from just beneath the elbow.

Victus, despite being a Red Redeptionist, keeps stats about his exploits. There are tally marks on the character sheet for various things: "Dudes Killed," "Dudes Tortured," "Headshots," "Dudes Burned," etc. All of those went up a lot last night. I think I killed something like 25 people.

(Turns out that a flame-throwing weapon is exceptionally effective at killing masses of goons who are assaulting your position through a narrow cavern.)

Unfortunately, I had to add a new statistic - one that threatens Victus' position as a pure servant of the Emperor of Mankind: Inquisitors Killed.

Yeah. So, you know how we broke some guy out of an Inquisition prison? A prison we had the keys to? Well. It seems someone didn't get the paperwork and decided to hunt us down. A big, bad-ass witch hunter. And he attacked us in the middle of the fight.

So I put him down with a double tap bolter shot to the head.

Changing tack.

I've been thinking a lot about Dark Heresy as a "game". It's very strange, because even though the system is very basic and simple, the game world is some seriously advanced roleplaying. It is absolutely not a "beginner's" game. Go play Dungeons and Dragons for that. Hell, even Call of Cthulhu is an easier game to start with.

The reason is because, in the Warhammer 40k universe, in Dark Heresy, the Imperium of Man is effectively the Nazi party and the player characters are really the equivalent of the SS.

Think about it for a second. Fascist government, riddled with bureaucracy, ostensibly ruled by a hyper-charismatic figure? Check. Hyper-xenophobic foreign policy which encourages the wholesale genocide of any alien populations? Check. People being kidnapped in the middle of the night, put on secret transports, and sent to camps where they are likely to be killed? Check. Ingrained, government-sponsored racism? Check. Forced sterilization in non-compliant populaces? Check.

And the player characters themselves? Dude, we're the fucking bad guys. A secretive branch of the government whose authority oversteps everyone else's, able to commandeer whole legions, whose job it is to root out, "interrogate", and then ultimately execute dissenters?

Totally the bad guys in the story.

Which is why the game is absolutely an "advanced" game. We had a new player start last night, and we had a little chat about it. There are things that my character says and does that I do not and would never do. He fucking *tortures* people. A lot! He likes doing it, too; so much the better that he can do it with religious fervor.

I expect that if most people would be completely appalled if they just observed a game session as an outsider.

And yet, it's one of the most fun games I've ever played precisely because the morality of the situation is so foreign to my own.

Ironic.

I realize it's been a while since I've updated about our ongoing Dark Heresy game. Why is that, you may ask?

Well, we're deep undercover and have been for several sessions.

Many moons ago, we busted apart a (smallish) gang of heretics who were selling a psychoactive drug made from the distilled brains of psychically sensitive citizens of the Empire. We kind of lost threads for the "master" part of that cult and let it go.

However, several months ago (game time) we came across new information, and have since set in motion a broad and intricate plan to identify and hook everyone involved in the production of this drug throughout about 12 planetary systems.

I'm fairly certain that the adventure, as written, meant for us to find out the bad guys on Plant A and then fight them and thus win. However, we decided that that wasn't good enough, so we started infiltrating the cult. We got jobs as drug smugglers for them so that we could find out who they were selling to on other planets. This turned out to be an exceptionally good idea.

The first planet we dealt with: they were chumps. We could have burnt them instantly. But then, in a happenstance, we ran across their number one competition, a group of tech-heretics trafficking in xenos (alien) technology and drugs. So we killed them. All of them - maybe thirty or forty in one building - and took over their organization. Then we told our contacts that those guys had been following us and we were pissed so we killed them and hey, here's all their business as a present.

Many other things have happened since then but we cemented our reputation as "hard core badasses" right then and there. And we were even able to spin a hunt for a major heretic as a "personal vendetta" so we have one cult looking for the leaders of another cult for us.

We have been going from planet to planet, making contacts, dropping shipment, taking names. Cataloging. Cross-referencing. Taking our time, being patient. The drugs are getting sold, and that's bad, but a handful of fancy-pants nobles getting screwed up on a heretical drug is small fry in the grand scheme of the Glory that is the Emperor's Will.

We keep getting tested by the cult. Small things, mostly, but one of our tasks was to break a heretic out of an Inquisition prison. Turns out, when you have a fucking Rosette, "breaking" someone out of a prison that you have the keys to is trivial. I bring different contacts small "gifts" of heretical technology that I requisition from the stores.

Sadly, we haven't been able to kill a lot of people. It's been politics, deception, and intrigue mostly. Soon, though - and very soon - I will close my fist, and the net will drop simultaneously on 15 worlds, and we'll scoop up hundreds of heretics like krill.

And then I will be allowed to indulge my psychosis. I will collect them in a big group and then I burn them all. In a stadium. And we'll sell tickets.

Oh, yeah. My crazy, psychotic priest? He's being considered for Interrogator. So I'll have a full rosette. Then: many deaths.

Tonight, for the Greater Glory of the Emperor:

Dudes Tortured/Interrogated: += 1 (My base interrogate skill is sick. It's like 85 or so.)
Orks and Gretchin Cleansed and Purified by Fire: 23 (Flame weapons + Cleanse and Purify + Room full of Orks and Gretchin and No Exits)

Our crew is trapped on a space ship with a bunch of Orks. The Orks are fighting each other. My character's opinion is that this is not our job to investigate. Fuck this; we're Ordo Hereticus, not Ordo Xenos. I want to find mutants and heresy; not aliens. This is a kill-job; we're being sent on this mission in order to get killed.

Also, I was gifted a holy, ancient crossbow. It has a name, and a history, and was made with wood from Terra. Eat that, bitches. I'm now a Cleric.

As chronicled previously and previously, I am running an adventure in our weekly game of Dark Heresy.

This week's adventure was mostly about investigation and putting the pieces together - specifically, investigating the Space Marine who brought them the mission in the first place.

The first did a DNA analysis on the "dog boy" they had killed and determined that it was a conglomerate of 12 different gene-sets, one of which was a perfect match for a child of one of the noble families, the Mik'lau, that had gone missing some 12 years prior. They then set out to investigate the family, which was, coincidentally (or not) based on their current planet.

This particular noble house gained much of its wealth through the ownership and management of several "death worlds" - harsh planets, needed for some sort of resource.

Due to some incredibly good rolls, our inquisitors managed to discover something about both Space Marines. Namely, that they are biological "cousins." They both came from the same gene-stock. The gene-stock of the Mik'lau family. They both came from different worlds, but the Space Marines take recruits from nearly all Death Worlds.

Further, they discovered that the world that Markus (the Apothecary and supposed "good guy") hailed from had been lost to Chaos some 5 years back. Specifically, to Tzeentch, the God of Change.

At this point, they opened a case on Markus and made him their primary target of investigation. But one does not just accuse a Space Marine of heresy. So they went to go visit the Mik'lau household, under the auspices of doing a large tax audit.

After some hullabaloo about authority and getting past the gates, they were met by the house seneschal, a very tall, gangly man dressed in flowing robes. I had him speak in a weird sing-song voice, something that the players hated. They immediately wanted to burn him.

He escorted them in the house along with five floating servitors, all the while explaining that they could not possibly see the master of the house because he was currently undergoing a biological rejuvenation process, and was sleeping inside an induced coma.

After more and more pressure about seeing him - even to verify that he existed, the seneschal turned on them. The back of his robes split open and twelve barbed, iridescent, and segmented "arms" came out of his back. And they had a combat with a Tzeentchian mutant and five servitor droids.

This went about as expected with two hitches: the mutant had an incredibly high willpower, and thus was effectively immune to the psyker's attacks, and his arms were able to cast some sort of hypnotic spell on the characters. This almost went. . . incredibly poor for the players, as the gun assassin got whammied by it at first.

Anyways. They got him down with a shocksword and then cut his head off. A bunch of dusty spiders came out of the neck and scurried off.

They decided to call in the Inquisitorial storm troopers at this point, which is where we left off.

Next: A dungeon crawl filled with mutants!

I forgot to update the unwashed, heretical masses as to the results of last week's Dark Heresy game.

When we last left our Inquisitors, they had failed to chase a renegade Space Marine (dedicated to Nurgle), and his companion/slave creature - some sort of mutant who looked like a large dog with too many joints. The Marine had stolen about 60 Gene Seeds, a hyper-valuable commodity (the things that make Space Marines go).

They were tasked with recovering the gene seeds by Markus, an Apothecary of the Space Marine chapter the traitor hailed from. Markus was. . . significantly injured.

In the process of this chase, about 100,000 civilians were killed after the Chaos Marine let loose a plague and the area was firebombed from orbit.

Last week's session was spent persuing various levels of investigation. The players went about trying to locate possible Nurgle cults. They believed, also, that the Nurglites were planning to implant the gene-seeds, which would require access to a well-equipped lab.

After some really good investigation rolls, they had multiple "close encounters" with the cultists, all of which ended. . . poorly. As in, they made contact, and set up an ambush, but the ambush was seen, and the bad guys made off. And then purged their warren.

However, it was during the forensic evaluation of the purged warren that they made thier first big break: they discovered the dog boy creature spying on the forensic investigation, wearing a chameleon cloak.

So they killed it. Mostly by accident (KBK's character being very vicious with a sword). They then discovered three things:

1) This was not the same "dog boy" they had seen. It was smaller, less mature.

2) It wasn't actually any sort of "living" creature that we normally think of as being "alive". The dog boys are closer to being . . . servitor. . . creatures, and it was pretty much a large, dog-shaped disease.

3) It was also some sort of incubator. Inside of the dog boy's chest there was a small, growing fetus. . . like. . . thing. With a full beard that was all matted and gross from the disease-gore.

That's when they realized that the dog boys were incubators for the gene-seeds: the fetus-thing was actually a growing Space Marine clone. And that there wasn't going to be a lab to be found, because the dogboys were the lab.

Good times.

Also, they're now about 90% certain that the first Space Marine, Markus, is also a traitor.

The answer to that question, however, remains in the future.

What do you get when you cross the phrases "Adeptus Astartes", "Hive Fleet Kraken", and "My Players"?

The current adventure, which I am running.

I have never run a Warhammer 40k adventure before, so this is a bit of an experience for me - though I think I figured it out well enough because the players are peeing in their britches well enough and there have been over 100,000 civilian deaths within three hours of game time.

The basic plot:

The Space Wolves, a chapter of w40k Space Marines, have been fighting Hive Fleet Kraken, a spear of Tyranids. This is bad. That chapter gets their asses handed to them. This is also bad.

An Apothecary of the chapter, Markus, collects the glands (uh, super-genetic material that dates to the Emperor and makes the Space Marines superhuman) from the fallen marines - about 50 or so. He is then betrayed by Sgt. Jeremiah, who has fallen to Nurgle, the Chaos God of Disease. Jeremiah totally fucks up Markus and steals the Holy Box of glands and takes off.

Markus follows. A space battle ensues. The two shoot each other down onto the back-ass planet the players are on.

They talk to Markus, who has lost an arm and a leg and half his head in the combat. He says "get the glands before they fall into enemy hands". So they head off to the other crash site. They do some investigation and determine that the survivors are: a) a large (8.5 feet tall) dude with yellow eyes (Jeremiah, Sgt. Adeptus Astartes) and b) Some sort of half-man, half-dog boy.

The two bad guys escape the area, killing some people and stealing a vehicle. Jeremiah, being a servant of Nurgle, is leaving disease in his wake. So they call down the fire, and 100,000+ people in the immediate area are killed by fire bombs.

The best they can do after that is see the villains in a spraypainted security camera. Session over; bad guys escaped.

So they have what amounts to a Chaos Space Marine dedicated to Nurgle and his servant on the loose.

And one of the players has come to the conclusion that the reason that Jeremiah came here is because there is a series of Nurgle clones ready for gland implantation.

Fun fun fun.

During this evening's Dark Heresy game, for the Greater Glory of the Emperor, Our Lord and Savior, we uncovered and destroyed a plot to deprive the Emperor of the psychic servants needed to power the Black Ships. Many psykers were being "disappeared" in the Hive - over 2,000 - and we were sent to discover the truth.

This ended up being that the psykers were being shuffled off through what they thought was a kind of "underground railroad" but were really being murdered and having their bodies distilled into a narcotic, "living" liquor which was being consumed by a bunch of spoiled, young, pansy children of the nobility.

Dudes Killed: 2
Limbs Severed: 3*
"Interrogations": 1
Heretics Brought to Penance: 1
Heretics Burnt: 10**

*This was one dude, actually. I hit him with a chainsword, rolled a 10 for damage, rolled my crit and hit, rolled another 10, and then rolled a 2. 24 total points of damage (chainsword is +2), against a guy with no armor. Hit him in the right thigh and tore upwards, cutting him in to four pieces. He was the "muscle" for a group of three heretics (the other two were a priest [who we wanted alive for "interrogation"] and a medic [which was how we suckered them into the area, by feigning an illness]. I started combat by eliminating the muscle; KBK shot the medic's leg off, and then the others collectively beat down the priest for a while, a fight that ended with someone cutting his leg off. I then "interrogated" him with my nifty new Excruciator kit to get the info we needed to proceed. I also got him to confess his sins and accept the Emperor as his savior before I burnt him alive.

**While I lit flame to 10 people, only one of them counted as a "dudes killed" statistic because 9 of them were captured by Inquisitor Stormtroopers and then interrogated by others. I was merely given the honor of setting them alight.

Tonight was our Dark Heresy game, in which I play the role of a cleric in the cult of the Red Redemption.

Take your average lunatic willing to bomb an abortion clinic and turn his volume up to Eleven. That is a Red Redemptionist. They stalk the streets in pure red color. They . . . burn people. Well. Almost.

Witches must be sent to the fire.

Mutants must be rendered.

Heretics must be brought to penance and then death.

There is a lot of leeway regarding the definition of "penance" when it comes to heretics.

This leeway includes the definition of "heretic".

My character, Brother Victus, defines a heretic as "anyone who speaks against the Emperor." Not uncoincidentally, this includes the subset of individuals who insult or attack him. An insult upon him is an insult upon the Church, which is an insult unto the Emperor, which is heresy.

Much fun.

Only I didn't get to burn anyone this evening. My death count has not increased.

I expect that to change, though, as we have (as far as I know) uncovered a splinter cult dedicated to the Chaos god Slaanesh.

So there will be burning. In the future.

For now, I must take solace in the fact that a good Intimidation roll plus the statement "you know that, unless you tell me what I want to know, that I will cut you apart bone by bone until you confess and then burn what remains" results in someone crying.

Ah, the glories of being Lawful Evil and yet remaining totally within the realm of "acceptable behavior."

ALL GLORY FOR THE EMPEROR.

We are playing Dark Heresy, which is Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay.

My character is a Red Redemptionist priest (read: the kind of whacko who bombs abortion clinics).

This evening, for the Eternal Glory of the Emperor, I racked up the following:

Dudes Killed: 3
Limbs Severed: 2 (chainsword ftw)
Faces Shot Off (Headshots): 1
Heretics Delivered to the Arbites: 2

ALL GLORY TO THE EMPEROR.