I am currently running my group through Purge the Unclean, starting with Rejoice for you are true (RFYAT).

Previously the group had succesfully completed Illumination so they were fully up to speed on Aristarchus' downfall and the use of the Emperor's Tarot.

Now RFYAT start off with the discovery that the Joyous choir are using the same tech in their Harmony Meters to guage the suitability of victims of psychic potential so they can be turned into Farcosia.

Now my understanding is that as well as helping Laurent Strophes find out what happened to his niece the over arching goal is that Varak wants the group to find out who got to Aristarchus and why. It all starts off well with the plot hook mentioned above but from my reading the climax and conclusion does not touch on the Illumination/Aristachus bit at all.

The group basically find out that it is a big drug scam run by a shadow group known as the Serrated Query and somehow they have got hold of tech from the Adraanti civilization. Where is the link to Aristarchus?

Sorry if i have missed something stupidly blatant, wouldn't be the first time, but just wanted confirmation of the above so I can think of something suitability dark and mysterious to link the Serrated Query to Aristarchus.

The only link in RFYAT to Illumination and Aristarchus is a throwaway comment by the Oracle Ocular, and then only if you ask the right question- Why would someone put that circuitry in a Tarot card? 'To Destroy a seer'.

That's it. I believe the whole idea is that the SQ become over-arching bad-guys, with multiple plots, and you gradually get more and more clues from each adventure.

Personally, I dislike them. I might use them as a 'facilitator' cult/group, but I wrote them out of RFYAT, and plan on doing the same to the later modules in PtU.

Aristarchus ties in because of the fact that the technology used by the Serrated Query all bears a resemblance to that card, thereby making all these things connected. Though how they are has yet to be seen...

The real answer to the question of what happened to Aristarchus is in the back of the book, the appendix letters between Inquisitors.

The Faceless One is eliminating diviners to prevent them from foreseeing his objectives.
This is why Aristarchus was targeted.

However, in my opinion, the link is not strong enough or obvious enough in Rejoice. For cohesive storytelling, I would make sure the information that the SQ seems to be connected with a number of diviner deaths comes out. Rather than hoping a player happens to ask the Oracle about it, and giving a less than satisfying answer.

I can't offer what I did when I ran it, because in my campaign the SQ was not behind Rejoice, and the motivations regarding Aristarchus were completely different. But presumably you could find a way to work this information into either the raid on the temple in Ambulon, or the visit to the Oracle.

aethel said:

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The play by post group I'm running Illumination for (with a sight to head into PtU) has a diviner among their numbers and I'd planned for their Inquisitor to employ a number of other such psykers. This will make things interesting.