Hi guys,

I could really do with some input from my fellow GM's. Here is the situation.

*SPOILER*

The group of Acolytes are in the alabaster court. Mingling with the crowd and generally making a good impression. It gets to about 1 A.M (game time) and Theodosia walks in and starts to talk to Shoal, having dragged him off to one side. So far so good. The group is well spead out and are keeping an eye on him.

BUT (here is where it all goes Pete Tong)

Then the cleric decides to walk up to Theo and Shoal and declares "Imperial Inquisition! No body move!". As per the book, Theo shoots Shoal in the head, stabs the cleric with his 2 power blades, reducing him to 0 wounds and runs off. At this point Shoal hadn't mentioned anything about Ambulon and the cleric got him killed. The groups psyker the tried to heal the cleric and failed biblically and ended up summoning an aetheric storm and electrocuting about 40 nobles and taking the cleric to -4 Critical. The magistratum guard then turned all guns on the psyker and took her down.

Here is my problem. I have two characters in intensive care. An Inquisitional cell with blown cover and 3 characters wondering what to do next because they have no leads.

I was thinking about sending a merc team to take out the 2 characters in the ICU and another merc team to take out the remaining chars at the Strophes house but I don't want to punish the group for 1 persons mistake.

Thanks for reading.

Don't kill off the team, there is no reason to do so. If you are wanting to start fresh, just have everyone roll a new character, otherwise they will be in a no win situation which they have to play out.

The Psyker of course needs to be re-rolled. No two ways about that. The cleric will live, it will just take time and a bionic appendage or two. There are a number of ways that this can be handled, if they have a Rosette that will trump the guards, and they should NOT open fire. You can have the actual inquisitor show up to smooth things out.

Perhaps have the local police take all into custody, and the acolytes checking out as on a mission for an inquisitor clears their name and a scared noble that was leery of the whole thing come to the cleric or his friends while at the med center and spill some beans about stuff that he had overheard, which will lead them to Ambulon. Theo must have given the authorities the slip....dun dun duuuuun.

Heya! Sorry to hear that the mission went klybo. But it IS a failed mission. Your resident bad guy now knows the Inquisition is on to him. Expect the baddie to go to ground and recoup whatever resources are available. Also, you can expect your Inquisitor to be extremely unhappy with the team. My group had a catastrophic failure in the "Edge of Darkness" downloadable game scenario. They let the Chirurgeon escape. Good news for you is, now the Team (or, what's left of the team) has a recurring villain to deal with, plus they have to provide some darn good roleplay to get themselves out of the Inquisitor's bad graces. My advice is: Pull out the team, make it a bit more difficult to acquire Ordos gear (increase difficulty or reduce avail due to bad rep) and give them a couple of really difficult missions while your Inquisitor decides if he should let them live.

Actually, since the Inquisition card has already been played, your Acolytes could just go balls out and put the entire staff of the Alabaster Court to the question. Members of the court are aware that shipments of something and Theodosia come and go regularly. Inspecting the hive's air traffic logs and cross referencing them with the court's records will turn up his movements. Fuel use will indicate Ambulon as a likely destination...

However - since Theodosia knows that it isn't just some local investigators, but the Inquisition is now involved, he'll consider the jig well and truly up. He may or may not despatch mercenaries to the Strophes home, but he will certainly head back to Ambulon immediately to close down the operation and vanish. Unless the Acolytes are really on the ball and immediately start rounding up witnesses, he'll likely slip free and as Illithidelderbrain put it: Good news for you, recurring villain to show up another day.

I'm with Illithidelderbrain and TS on this one, it's over. Leaving the whole storyline on the note of Theo shooting, stabbing, and getting away scott-free scant few clues as to what was really going on because the cleric jumped the gun should go a ways to teaching the acolytes the value of restraint. You shouldn't feel pressured to insure the story ends with the acolytes success no matter what. A failure with no closure is still a valid ending and one they could or should learn a lot from. After all, in their line of work, one false step could kill the lot of them... they're lucky this time it will just cause a heretic (or more) to escape. But on the bright side, the heresy should be over... for now.

So, cue up the next investigation to take place once the injured are back up on their feet and maybe somewhere down the road once they get a few more investigations under their belt, they could once again run into Theo and the whole plot they failed to uncover much more advanced, dangerous, and relocated to give them a chance for retribution.

As everyone mentioned before, this is over. Theo will be dodging authorities on his way back to ambulon, "cleaning the house" and then he will be leavning the planet.

But I would not kill anyone. Not even the psyker. Yes, he killed a dozen nobles (aehm..how happend that?) but every last one of them was guilty enough (dealing with traitors. Proof of this lies in the fact that Theo did not stopped as the =I= revealed itself). Don´t get me wrong, the =I= will brush them over "creme royal", but this one is done.

Use this to stamp this impression into them. Let them arrive on the other scenes. After they are allow blown up and/or cleaned serveral days before. Play the situations. Let them search around. Finding nothing. Let them nose around.ONly to spend a couple of days with finding clues leading to people "gone off", "gone missing" or "got killed" some days ago.

Did something similiar with my crew after "Edge". In the end, they might killed some people with the help of the Arbites while calling in a major raid. But while that happend, things got cleared, things got blown up and now they know nothing. And now, they -know- that they DO NOT KNOW.

It helps, the next time they will go for evidence, not attacking without knowing whom they are up against.

That is totally awesome! I love when pleyers go all LEEROOOOY JENKINS! and it kicks their own ass. Personally I would have their inquisitor bail them out and smooth things over and inform them that this mission is over. Go on to the next mission and hopefully you can bring the villian back in another adventure to wreak havok on the PCs.

I am about to get into an investigation adventure tonight just after the crew ended a run and gun heavy campaign in a war zone. I forsee much culture shock as they try to make information tests dressed in combat armor holding bolt guns and chain swords.

Illithidelderbrain said:

Blow the PCs' mind. Bring the Inquisitor in, all hell and brimstone, and then let your resident bad guy turn up dead, which gets the acolyte PCs back on the spot to un-cluster-f*ck everything. Shot in the head, or whatever. It's completely up to you if the old resident bad guy was actually the resident bad guy or some minor unrelated villain at this point and it was all a red herring, and now the real bad guy is covering his tracks.

Roll new NPC (actually, don't. Come up with a new name and use the old NPC stats). It starts out as a basic who-dun-it mystery to figure out the murderer is, and you can throw whatever info they missed into the investigation. Once they get the intel that the other guy should have gotten, feel free to introduce said Big Bad Evil Guy and you're off to the races again. If enough time passes, BBEG might even think that the Inquisition, while "aware" that something is afoot, has been sufficiently thrown for a loop, and relax.

Of course, I haven't read the adventure. No clue if this would work or not.

In the previous scene my players managed to kill Theodosia despite my best efforts to keep him alive! Part of my problem is that I make important rolls in front of the GM screen, and I rolled abysmally for him when trying to have him escape. Since the rolls were out there, I couldn't fudge them.

Oh well, I decided to make it so that the Serrated Query uses pairs of augmented agents to run their most important operations, so Theodosia will have a "brother" who will take his place in subsequent encounters.

Scott

I'm not sure I agree with many of the other posts which indicate this adventure is over. Your campaign does seem to be on life support (like a couple of the PCs), but not completely dead. Calling it over and moving on may be the simpliest path, but pulling it from the ashes will be a lot more rewarding.

I'm not totally familiar with the adventure you're running, but it sounds like you'll have to make some major adjustments pertaining to who knows what and how they will deal with that information. ( e.g. can Shoal be replaced?) Take into acccount what the PCs think they know for sure and alter the rest as need be. You indicated that the rest of the group has no leads, but someone sticking a power sword through a party member sounds like a pretty strong lead to me!

Drawing from your post you have a few things in your favor. 1) It seems many of the witnesses to the cleric's major blunder and Threo's subsequent reaction are dead thanks to the psyker (now that's karma!). 2) Theo may not know the other 3 PCs are associated with the cleric & psyker (?) so they could conceivable continue the investigation even though Theo's alert status will be in the RED.

Surely any baddy will eventually expect the authorities to start snooping into his affairs and will take measures to cover his tracks and defend his turf. I doubt, if the business was lucrative enough, he would cut bait and run at the first sign of trouble. At the very least I would give your remaining party (along with a couple of new PCs to replace the cleric & psyker) one final shot to bring down Theo - whether that's while he's trying to escape, go to ground, or continue on with his affairs is up to you. He did after all attack an official agent of the Inquisition.

I do agree with the threads that suggest the PC's inquisitor is going to be P O'd to say the least. The cleric performed a major blunder and should be made an example of accordingly. That's the only way your party (the cleric player specifically) is going to learn to be more subtle and should help prevent these plot-busters from occuring again. Next time the other PC's may put the power sword through him themselves!

In short, be flexible. Players are always going to throw curve balls at the plot - that's what makes it fun!

Ferrous Wrex said:

Just be careful that in being flexible you don't turn your plot into rail-road tracks with rubber walls. The mission could be a complete scrub, an utter failure, but that, in no way, means the campaign is over -it's just taken a radical change in course. Now, instead of it being about hunting the bad-guys and stopping Theo and what-not, 'cause that ship could have very well sailed, it could now be about dealing with the aftermath and repercussions of that ship sailing.

Being flexible doesn't mean hammering and beating at the plot so that no matter what the players do, it will always be about the thing you initially decided upon. Being flexible is being able to change the what the story is about and it's direction from what was initially planed based on the characters actions. Insuring that, no matter what you'll alter and change the plot so that they will eventually face bad-guy A and his machinations as was always planed is railroading. What is flexible is realizing that, based on the groups actions, they will never face bad-guy A or his machinations but you're still able to make a satisfying story out of what they've done and the new direction that, through their actions, they have chosen.

So, here I go with my old man of RPGs advice...The investigation is still on.

Inquisitor shows up, smooths things over, Calls them in and tells them that this investigation is over as he smiles graciously. If they press him about anything then he can go all steely eyed and tight lipped as he informs them that a failure on this scale could have been allowed to run its course, but that he believes they are salvageable. He gives them a chance to redeem themselves by investigating a minor heresy on...guess where? AMBULON! The players find themselves targetted by assassins and scum that the antagonist has hired to make them go away because he thinks they are following him. Or maybe just one of the players that he actually manages to identify is the real target. This puts them back on the trail, but now the difficulty level goes up several notches because the bad guy is wise to someone after him, the Inquisition at that.

just my 2 cents, and only one of a hundred ways I see you could take this. Don't feel bad though cause I am the same way when everything goes balls up with my players. It takes me days to figure out how to extricate the storyline from the mess they made.

Or just let their inquisitor grill them about it, and move on in a new direction entirely...

It is possible to just compartmentalize each adventure to functioning like a Law & Order episode... they arrive, they investigate, they make the big reveal, and the consequences of failure are trivial by end of next adventure.

Unless they keep screwing them all up.

Actually the group spent a week sodding about doing nothing with the 3 downed members got healed up. During that time Theodosia cleaned house and fled the planet. After the week was up I presented the characters with medical bills totalling about 15000 thrones and told them that they can't leave the planet unless they pay up. When they started investigating again they found that everything lead to a dead end. Blown up buildings, mass murders and no trace of who did it.

They have yet to go to they JC place in Ambulon but when they do they will see their inquisitor emerging looking extremely pissed off.

they will then have to give reports to 2 inquisitors. cue grilling.

VarniusEisen said:

Here my internal Mr.Wisemouth kicks into action

a) don´t you think this is a bit much? Or did you calculated that with the fees given in DH core rules?
b) about "not able to leave". I think they are. After all... is the medical center somehow linked to the space port/space ports? Are they actually on a "warrent for capital depts" list? Are those lists handed to every "space port control" and/or owner of a shuttle/lighter/lander that tends to space ships?

Don´t get me wrong...would be possible... but somehow, I doubt it. If this is possible, it would mean that "debt jumping through world jumping" would be impossible. And if the MEDICAL CENTERS are that good about it... how about Magistrat Men and other non-=I=-institutions when it comes to crimes equal to 15.000 throne debts?

Yes the medical bills were worked out more or less from the rule books.

However the bills were so high because I wanted them to think about all the implications involved in going off half cocked and getting shot up. Also they can leave the planet simply by saying "Kiss my ass! We work directly for the throne" or something like that. But I told them they can't leave just to see their reaction.

What the group doesn't know is that their wonderful Inquisitor that helps them out, provides what ever they need and smooths out any problems is buying their loyalty because he actually works for the SQ and wants them onboard.